ThePortraitofaLady(最新整理)

1、the portrait of a ladyby henry jamesplot overviewisabel archer is a woman in her early twenties who comes from a genteel family in albany, new york, in the late 1860s. her mother died when she was a young girl, and her father raised her in a haphazard manner, allowing her to educate herself and enco

2、uraging her independence. as a result, the adult isabel is widely read, imaginative, confident in her own mind, and slightly narcissistic; she has the reputation in albany for being a formidable intellect, and as a result she often seems intimidating to men. she has had few suitors, but one of them

3、is caspar goodwood, the powerful, charismatic son of a wealthy boston mill owner. isabel is drawn to caspar, but her commitment to her independence makes her fear him as well, for she feels that to marry him would be to sacrifice her freedom.shortly after isabels father dies, she receives a visit fr

4、om her indomitable aunt, mrs. touchett, an american who lives in europe. mrs. touchett offers to take isabel on a trip to europe, and isabel eagerly agrees, telling caspar that she cannot tell him whether she wishes to marry him until she has had at least a year to travel in europe with her aunt. is

5、abel and mrs. touchett leave for england, where mrs. touchetts estranged husband is a powerful banker. isabel makes a strong impression on everyone at mr. touchetts county manor of gardencourt: her cousin ralph, slowly dying of a lung disorder, becomes deeply devoted to her, and the touchetts aristo

6、cratic neighbor lord warburton falls in love with her. warburton proposes, but isabel declines; though she fears that she is passing up a great social opportunity by not marrying warburton, she still believes that marriage would damage her treasured independence. as a result, she pledges to accompli

7、sh something wonderful with her life, something that will justify her decision to reject warburton.isabels friend henrietta stackpole, an american journalist, believes that europe is changing isabel, slowly eroding her american values and replacing them with romantic idealism. henrietta comes to gar

8、dencourt and secretly arranges for caspar goodwood to meet isabel in london. goodwood again presses isabel to marry him; this time, she tells him she needs at least two years before she can answer him, and she promises him nothing. she is thrilled to have exercised her independence so forcefully. mr

9、. touchetts health declines, and ralph convinces him that when he dies, he should leave half his wealth to isabel: this will protect her independence and ensure that she will never have to marry for money. mr. touchett agrees shortly before he dies. isabel is left with a large fortune for the first

10、time in her life. her inheritance piques the interest of madame merle, mrs. touchetts polished, elegant friend; madame merle begins to lavish attention on isabel, and the two women become close friends.isabel travels to florence with mrs. touchett and madame merle; merle introduces isabel to a man n

11、amed gilbert osmond, a man of no social standing or wealth, but whom merle describes as one of the finest gentlemen in europe, wholly devoted to art and aesthetics. osmonds daughter pansy is being brought up in a convent; his wife is dead. in secret, osmond and merle have a mysterious relationship;

12、merle is attempting to manipulate isabel into marrying osmond so that he will have access to her fortune. osmond is pleased to marry isabel, not only for her money, but also because she makes a fine addition to his collection of art objects. everyone in isabels world disapproves of osmond, especiall

13、y ralph, but isabel chooses to marry him anyway. she has a child the year after they are married, but the boy dies six months after he is born. three years into their marriage, isabel and osmond have come to despise one another; they live with pansy in a palazzo in rome, where osmond treats isabel a

14、s barely a member of the family: to him, she is a social hostess and a source of wealth, and he is annoyed by her independence and her insistence on having her own opinions. isabel chafes against osmonds arrogance, his selfishness, and his sinister desire to crush her individuality, but she does not

15、 consider leaving him. for all her commitment to her independence, isabel is also committed to4her social duty, and when she married osmond, she did so with the intention of transforming herself into a good wife.a young american art collector who lives in paris, edward rosier, comes to rome and fall

16、s in love with pansy; pansy returns his feelings. but osmond is insistent that pansy should marry a nobleman, and he says that rosier is neither rich nor highborn enough. matters grow complicated when lord warburton arrives on the scene and begins to court pansy. warburton is still in love with isab

17、el and wants to marry pansy solely to get closer to her. but osmond desperately wants to see pansy married to warburton. isabel is torn about whether to fulfill her duty to her husband and help him arrange the match between warburton and pansy, or to fulfill the impulse of her conscience and discour

18、age warburton, while helping pansy find a way to marry rosier.at a ball one night, isabel shows warburton the dejected-looking rosier and explains that this is the man who is in love with pansy. guiltily, warburton admits that he is not in love with pansy; he quietly arranges to leave rome. osmond i

19、s furious with isabel, convinced that she is plotting intentionally to humiliate him. madame merle is also furious with her, confronting her with shocking impropriety and demanding brazenly to know what she did to warburton. isabel has realized that there is something mysterious about madame merles

20、relationship with her husband; now, she suddenly realizes that merle is his lover.at this time, ralph is rapidly deteriorating, and isabel receives word that he is dying. she longs to travel to england to be with him, but osmond forbids it. now isabel must struggle to decide whether to obey his comm

21、and and remain true to her marriage vows or to disregard him and hurry to her cousins bedside. encouraging her to go, osmonds sister, the countess gemini, tells her that there is still more to merle and osmonds relationship. merle is pansys mother; pansy was born out of wedlock. osmonds wife died at

22、 about the same time, so merle and osmond spread the story that she died in childbirth. pansy was placed in a convent to be raised, and she does not know that merle is her real mother. isabel is shocked and disgusted by her husbands atrocious behaviorshe even feels sorry for merle for falling under

23、his spellso she decides to follow her heart and travel to england.after ralphs death, isabel struggles to decide whether to return to her husband or not. she promised pansy that she would return to rome, and her commitment to social propriety impels her to go back and honor her marriage. but her ind

24、ependent spirit urges her to flee from osmond and find happiness elsewhere. caspar goodwood appears at the funeral, and afterwards, he asks isabel to run away with him and forget about her husband. the next day, unable to find her, goodwood asks henrietta where she has gone. henrietta quietly tells

25、him that isabel has returned to rome, unable to break away from her marriage to gilbert osmond.major charactersisabel archer - the novels protagonist, the lady of the title. isabel is a young woman from albany, new york, who travels to europe with her aunt, mrs. touchett. isabels experiences in euro

26、peshe is wooed by an english lord, inherits a fortune, and falls prey to a villainous scheme to marry her to the sinister gilbert osmondforce her to confront the conflict between her desire for personal independence and her commitment to social propriety. isabel is the main focus of portrait of a la

27、dy, and most of the thematic exploration of the novel occurs through her actions, thoughts, and experiences. ultimately, isabel chooses to remain in her miserable marriage to osmond rather than to violate custom by leaving him and searching for a happier life.gilbert osmond - a cruel, narcissistic g

28、entleman of no particular social standing or wealth, who seduces isabel and marries her for her money. an art collector, osmond poses as a disinterested aesthete, but in reality he is desperate for the recognition and admiration of those around him. he treats everyone who loves him as simply an obje

29、ct to be used to fulfill his desires; he bases his daughter pansys upbringing on the idea that she should be unswervingly subservient to him, and he even treats his longtime lover madame merle as a mere tool. isabels marriage to osmond forces her to confront the conflict between her desire for indep

30、endenceand the painful social proprieties that force her to remain in her marriage.reading : chapter 7 (except )the two amused themselves, time and again, with talking of the attitude of the british public as if the young lady had been in a position to appeal to it; but in fact the british public re

31、mained for the present profoundly indifferent to miss isabel archer, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into the dullest house in england. her gouty uncle received very little company, and mrs. touchett, not having cultivated relations with her husbands neighbours, was not warranted

32、in expecting visits from them. she had, however, a peculiar taste; she liked to receive cards. for what is usually called social intercourse she had very little relish; but nothing pleased her more than to find her hall-table whitened with oblong morsels of symbolic pasteboard. she flattered herself

33、 that she was a very just woman, and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing in this world is got for nothing. she had played no social part as mistress of gardencourt, and it was not to be supposed that, in the surrounding country, a minute account should be kept of her comings and goings. bu

34、t it is by no means certain that she did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken of them and that her failure (really very gratuitous) to make herself important in the neighbourhood had not much to do with the acrimony of her allusions to her husbands (81) adopted country. isabel pre

35、sently found herself in the singular situation of defending the british constitution against her aunt; mrs. touchett having formed the habit of sticking pins into this venerable instrument. isabel always felt an impulse to pull out the pins; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage on the tou

36、gh old parchment, but because it seemed to her her aunt might make better use of her sharpness. she was very critical herself-it was incidental to her age, her sex and her nationality; but she was very sentimental as well, and there was something in mrs. touchetts dryness that set her own moral foun

37、tains flowing.now whats your point of view? she asked of her aunt. when you criticise everything here you should have a point of view. yours doesnt seem to be american-you thought everything over there so disagreeable. when i criticise i have mine; its thoroughly american!my dear young lady, said mr

38、s. touchett, there are as many points of view in the world as there are people of sense to take them. you may say that doesnt make them very numerous! american? never in the world; thats shockingly narrow. my point of view, thank god, is personal!isabel thought this a better answer than she admitted

39、; it was a tolerable description of her own manner of judging, but it would not have sounded well for her to say so. on the lips of a person less advanced in life and less enlightened by experience than mrs. touchett such a declaration would savour of immodesty, even of arrogance. she risked it (82)

40、 nevertheless in talking with ralph, with whom she talked a great deal and with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a large licence to extravagance. her cousin used, as the phrase is, to chaff her; he very soon established with her a reputation for treating everything as a joke, and he was

41、 not a man to neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred. she accused him of an odious want of seriousness, of laughing at all things, beginning with himself. such slender faculty of reverence as he possessed centred wholly upon his father; for the rest, he exercised his wit indifferently up

42、on his fathers son, this gentlemans weak lungs, his useless life, his fantastic mother, his friends (lord warburton in especial), his adopted, and his native country, his charming new-found cousin. i keep a band of music in my ante-room, he said once to her. it has orders to play without stopping; i

43、t renders me two excellent services. it keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think that dancings going on within. it was dance-music indeed that you usually heard when you came within ear-shot of ralphs band; the liveliest waltzes seemed to float

44、 upon the air. isabel often found herself irritated by this perpetual fiddling; she would have liked to pass through the ante-room, as her cousin called it, and enter the private apartments. it mattered little that he had assured her they were a very dismal place; she would have been glad to underta

45、ke to sweep them and set them in order. it was but half-hospitality to let her remain outside; to punish him for which isabeladministered innumerable taps (83) with the ferule of her straight young wit. it must be said that her wit was exercised to a large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amus

46、ed himself with calling her columbia and accusing her of a patriotism so heated that it scorched. he drew a caricature of her in which she was represented as a very pretty young woman dressed, on the lines of the prevailing fashion, in the folds of the national banner. isabels chief dread in life at

47、 this period of her development was that she should appear narrow-minded; what she feared next afterwards was that she should really be so. but she nevertheless made no scruple of abounding in her cousins sense and pretending to sigh for the charms of her native land. she would be as american as it

48、pleased him to regard her, and if he chose to laugh at her she would give him plenty of occupation. she defended england against his mother, but when ralph sang its praises on purpose, as she said, to work her up, she found herself able to differ from him on a variety of points. in fact, the quality

49、 of this small ripe country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an october pear; and her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which enabled her to take her cousins chaff and return it in kind. if her good-humour flagged at moments it was not because she thought herself ill-used, but b

50、ecause she suddenly felt sorry for ralph. it seemed to her he was talking as a blind and had little heart in what he said.i dont know whats the matter with you, she observed to him once; but i suspect youre a great humbug.thats your privilege, ralph answered, who had not been used to being so crudel

51、y addressed.i dont know what you care for; i dont think you care for anything. you dont really care for england when you praise it; you dont care for america even when you pretend to abuse it.i care for nothing but you, dear cousin, said ralph. if i could believe even that, i should be very glad. ah

52、 well, i should hope so! the young man exclaimed.isabel might have believed it and not have been far from the truth. he thought a great deal about her; she was constantly present to his mind. at a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her sudden arrival, which promised nothi

53、ng and was an open-handed gift of fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and something to fly for. poor ralph had been for many weeks steeped in melancholy; his outlook, habitually sombre, lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud. he had grown anxious about his father, whose gout, hi

54、therto confined to his legs, had begun to ascend into regions more vital. the old man had been gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered to ralph that another attack would be less easy to deal with. just now he appeared disburdened of pain, but ralph could not rid himself of a suspici

55、on that this was a subterfuge of the enemy, who was waiting to take him off his guard. if the manoeuvre should succeed there would be little hope of any great resistance. (85) ralph had always taken for granted that his father would survive him-that his own name would be the first grimly called. the father and son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnan