The Portrait Of A Lady:Henry James And The Theme Of Growth

The Portrait of a Lady is prevailingly interpreted as a bildungsroman while this thesis attempts to demonstrate that the novel actually differentiates from the traditional pattern of bildungsroman under Henry James 's unique notion of the theme of growth.In his memoir and literary career James offers a special notion of growth.For him,the subject of growth is one's consciousness instead of one's objective existence within a certain society.In other words,experience of the consciousness is granted a central position in growth.And perspective taken by the consciousness makes sense of the experience of growth.In general,James proposes an aesthetic perspective.That is,to understand the experience of growth is essentially an aesthetic activity,in which the consciousness as the aesthetic subject interacts with the experience itself as an aesthetic object.James's aesthetic perspective in his notion of growth is fully illustrated in his fictional narrative of the theme and furthermore suggests that the experience of growth is meanwhile an organic,continuous process.In consequence,James's special notion of growth provides a new angle to reconsider the theme of' growth in The Porlrail of a Lady,James's representative novel,and the novel's common reception as a bildungsroman.Despite introduction and conclusion,this thesis is constituted of three chapters.In introduction,this thesis examines the theme of growth as a major theme in James's voluminous body of work,makes brief retrospection on previous studies,gives thesis statement and explains basic structure of this thesis.Chapter one demonstrates from James's personal experience of growth and his literary practice of growth that James's notion of the theme is marked by an aesthetic perspective as well as an organic perspective.Chapter two and chapter three makes analysis of the specific text of The Portrait of a Lady respectively form the two perspective of James's notion of growth.Chapter two illuminates that the growth of Isabel the protagonist proves to be an aesthetic one and her aesthetic treatment of life generates aesthetic questions from the centralized consciousness and it is this conscious self that differentiates the novel from conventional bildungsroman.Chapter three then explains from the organic perspective organism and continuity in Isabel's experience of growth.In its proposal of an organic and continuous process of growth's aesthetic experience organism and continuity in growth reverses a traditional linear process of experience gaining in traditional pattern of the bildungsroman.