A Return To Life: Transcendence From The Tragedy

The 19^th century is known as an age of novelists. Henry James is regarded as the largest literary figure that came out in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Portrait of a Lady is universally acknowledged as his masterpiece, in which Henry James aims at portraying a "new woman "—Isabel Archer, who is described as a young woman of great independence and large liberty. However, The Portrait of a Lady has been hotly debated by the major Jamesian critics. Most of them argue that in the novel Isabel actually serves as an object to be watched, collected and used. It is impossible for her to break the law of a society shaped by patriarchal ideology at that time, for which her life is inevitably a tragedy.The thesis tries to approach Isabel in a favorable light from a feminist perspective. The theory of Simone de Beauvoir is applied to the analysis. In spite of all Isabel's failures in her marriage, she will be valued for her noble ideas and strong will to lead a life of choosing instead of being chosen. Her final return to Rome will be viewed as transcendence from her tragedy to a new leaf of her life.The thesis is composed of introduction, literature review and another four chapters. In the introduction the life and achievement of Henry James is briefly introduced, a summary of the novel is presented, and the feminist theory is presented as well. Chapter Two is a brief literature review of important literary criticism of the novel and the feminism. Chapter Three begins with a general survey of Isabel's character as well as her ambition, and stress is to be laid on her strong will to lead a chosen life by making her own decisions. Chapter Four is supposed to deal with Isabel's free choices she makes at several critical moments, with the focus on her fatal one—her marriage to Gilbert Osmond. Chapter Five is devoted to the most important and also original part of the thesis—Isabel's suffering, despair and her final transcendence of self from her personal tragedy. The last chapter is a brief conclusion that summarizes the thesis and reiterates its focus.