| Much of James's writing concerns one of his favorite topics—the imagination. In The Portrait of a Lady, he explores this topic through the consciousness of his heroine, Isabel Archer. This study aims to demonstrate that the lack of direction in Isabel's formative years was greatly responsible for her inability to translate illusion into reality. The method used in this exploration was to study the heroine's reactions in relation to those who supported her and those who deceived her, in order to demonstrate her predilection for preferring romantic choices over reasonable ones. Lacking early guidance and mentoring of any kind, Isabel functions as her own guide through a life that exposes her to an unsuspecting evil. It is the experience of confronting this evil, this experience of life, which finally allows Isabel to experience life as reality and not merely as a product of her imagination. |
