Portrait of a Lady

One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, "e;affront her destiny."e; James began The Portrait of a Lady without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish-and then protect-her independence. But Isabel's pursuit of spiritual freedom collapses when she meets the captivating Gilbert Osmond. "e;James's formidable powers of observation, his stance as a kind of bachelor recorder of human doings in which he is not involved,"e; writes Hortense Calisher, "e;make him a first-class documentarian, joining him to that great body of storytellers who amass what formal history cannot."e;