Portrait of a Lady, Season One

Isabel Archer turns down proposals from two handsome men of means because "I don't want to begin life by marrying.  There are other things a woman can do," and she rejects "security" that comes with "deep exclusion."  This independent young woman, blithely self-confident, was ahead of her time in 1880, and young women I know of still haven't caught up to her.  No wonder that her story, told in Henry James's greatest hit, The Portrait of a Lady, now has two follow-ups:  John Banfield's Mrs. Osmond, and Colm Toibin's The Master.

Like a series on Netflix, The Portrait of a Lady developed through episodes in The Atlantic Monthly back in 1880-1881.  Awed by Henry James when I read the work for an independent study at Duke 40 years ago, I didn't appreciate how James played with popular conventions and contemporary topics.

Like any comic operetta of the time, the courtship of young, appealing, level-headed Isabel is buttressed by the stories of two other couples.  There's a comically quarrelsome older couple -- mild Mr. Touchett, expatriot American millionaire, and his opinionated wife.  Then there's the comical juvenile couple, a Yankee newspaper's intrepid lady correspondent Henrietta Stackpole, who "cares nothing for the past" and who "knew perfectly in advance … what her opinions [of Europe] would be," pursued doggedly by a minor British peer named Bantling.

James was having fun with the fad for globe-trotting journalists like Nellie Bly.  There was a marketable interest in the Old World (read Ah, Paris: The Greater Journey in my blogpost). James plays with the text messaging of the day, giving us elliptical telegram messages from Mrs. Touchett, who thinks "clearness is too expensive," but she doesn't spare on complaints:  "Changed hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here."  James gives playful names to minor characters: Mrs. Pensil is a thin writer, the Climbers are social wannabes from the US, and he names the virile upright suitor from America "Caspar Goodwood." James also gives us epigrammatic wit from Isabel's cousin Ralph Touchett.

By the end of volume one, sort of "season one" in today's terms, Isabel's friends, including the two rejected suitors, are all joining forces to prevent her from falling for a shady expat artist named Gilbert Osmond.  In Season Two, the comedy becomes tragedy, as Isabel's headstrong self-confidence leads her into a trap.  In the climactic scene of that book, she has respite from her bad marriage, but chooses to board the train that begins a journey back to her awful lawful husband.

That's precisely where Mrs. Osmond picks up.  I've read just enough of that to appreciate how Banfield emulates James's interior explorations with a lighter touch.  He also introduces Isabel to suffering of a different sort, bringing her face to face in London with a lost man weeping on a street corner, and with women's rights activists.

I'll report on subsequent seasons of this wonderful series when I've had time to "binge" on them.

[See my reflection upon re-reading one of James's earlier hits, The American.]