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The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a free-spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who inherits a large amount of money and eventually becomes the victim of the scheming by two dissolute American expatriates. In James's own words, it is the story of a woman "affronting her destiny." As she grows wealthier, she finds herself paradoxically become less free, bristling against being "ground in the very mill of the conventional." Like many of James's novels, it features American characters living and travelling abroad in Europe and provides James with a venue to explore his ideas regarding the tensions and connections between the "New World" and the "Old." The Portrait of a Lady is considered to have broken new ground in the analysis of human consciousness and motivation in a novel, with the protagonist Isabel Archer often meditating deeply on her predicaments and motivations, and conflicting feelings of obligations and a longing for independence. The Portrait of a Lady is Henry James at his finest -- crafting a novel that is spellbinding and beautifully written -- and at his most important -- breaking new ground in what a novel can and should be, making it a literal must-read for any lover of English language literature. Amazon
