Rich And Profound Themes, New And Original Techniques

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James's early best-known masterpiece, is commonly acknowledged as his best and a great work in English literature. It is also a landmark achievement in his literary career. In the very thickness of its texture, its crisp and smooth style, its innovative techniques, its shrewd glimpses of social anxiety and change, even its sheer scale as well as its subtle probing of its heroine's consciousness, The Portrait of a Lady bears comparison with the major achievements of nineteenth century European fiction.The most striking strength of the novel, as I read it, mainly lies in its rich and profound themes, new and original techniques, into which my thesis will explore in three chapters.The first chapter is to deal with Henry James's personal background and how his unusual upbringing and cosmopolitan personal experience influence his literary creation, which I hope can better our understanding ofHenry James and his work under discussion coming in the next two chapters. The second part will make a penetrating probe into the novel's rich and profound themes. "International Theme" has been James's great literary subject, and is the dominant theme in The Portrait. The Portrait has revealed the clash between the American innocence and European corruption in a more powerful and profound scale. As a picture of American moving in the expatriate society of Europe, this novel has no equal in the history of modern literature. James's extraordinary capacity for representing and identifying with a female consciousness, becomes apparent in The Portrait. Victorian woman situation is another theme, by which we come to recognize the author's masterful hand. Through Isabel's love and tragic marriage, James profoundly revealed that equality of sexes, marriage of reciprocal mastery, were culpably remote from the social reality. The novel ended with Jamesian renunciation. Terminating in such gestures of renunciation, implicitly linking heightened consciousness with loss, refusing to forecast the heroine's fate, James's narratives repeatedlydefy the convention of the "happy ending". Such an irregular denouement piques heated discussions among critics and readers as well. Isabel's final gesture, as I read it, should primarily be read in the context of the novel's extended exploration of the possible meanings of "freedom": from her original, prototypically American belief in an independence that defies all limits, Isabel gradually arrives at a sense of freedom that is largely a state of consciousness-the paradoxical freedom of a self that deliberately accepts its own constraints and faces responsibility for the choices that it makes. The third chapter will mainly study the two innovative artistic devices employed in the novel: "central consciousness" point of view and symbolic imagery. In the novel, by placing the center of the subject in the young woman's own consciousness, James begins to reverse the whole idea of fictional narrative. The whole story is developed through Isabel's inner awareness and inward movement rather than the external events. It is Isabel's consciousness that comes increasingly to dominate the whole novel. With Isabel's awakening to the meaning of her experience, James graduallytransforms his international drama into a drama of consciousness. In order to depict Isabel's subtle consciousness, James ingenuously uses the symbolic imagery of houses and gardens to emphasize the essentially inward nature of Isabel's experience from innocence to maturity. To use symbol and image to reveal characters' inward movement is one of the major methods of James's psychological realism. It highlights the themes, appeals to our imagination and adds richness to the novel.My thesis is just a superficial research. James's The Portrait, so great and magnificent a work is worth our further studying.