Isabel Archer is the imposing figure in the Portrait of a Lady. Henry James is the author of the novel. He has beautifully portrayed the winding journey of a young woman’s desire to live free. She thinks she is powerful in severing the chains of parenthood. Set in the 1870s, it tells us how Isabel has a dreamlike quality of being mysteriously attractive and undeniably intelligent. From the beginning, we see her in a meditative mood as if she is pondering something serious and that was the marriage proposal to Lord Warburton. If you’ve seen the movie, Nicole Kidman plays the part and makes it easier for us to understand. He has tears in his eyes but he does not let them fall. It is symbolic. Another charming young man, Casper Goodwood, who is a bit fiercer when it comes to persuasion, is proposing it. Isabel rejects them both. This woman has great ideas about her life and wants to do them without the help of men. Continuing with the novel, we discover that he has also enchanted his cousin Ralph Touchett. He is a sick man and is hopelessly in love with her, but he meets a negative destiny. Isabel does not do it on purpose but the playwright has tried to show the female perspective through the hands of men. Isabel believes in love, but she also believes in struggles and painful life. When Lord Warburton approaches her, she politely declines his proposal saying that she likes him but cannot marry. He is eager to know why, but she remains silent.

Isabel is the living example of what a woman hopes and wants to live a liberal life. Going out into the world and exploring people is her main wish. You want to take risks and overcome dangerous situations. Here, Archer believes that his life will be painful and miserable. This does not mean that you are thinking about committing suicide. This is the hard fact of life, but everyone chooses to ignore it. Wise readers will react to Isabel as immature and negative, but I think it is her choice to live this way. She does not believe in hearts and flowers, but in pain and resistance. Some readers have vehemently rejected his thoughts, saying he has a strange prospect of being miserable. I say that if your life transmits pain to you, it also makes a refuge of a shoulder to carry all your tears. Isabel wanders to find that shoulder. She does not want to compromise with her destiny. Our female protagonist sincerely believes that she will be unhappy and that her destiny will allow her to live new experiences. The marriage chains will only prevent her from having her share of life and she strongly opposes this fact. Her dearest friend Henrietta Stackpole meets her in London and is very surprised by her devious attitude. She was even more surprised to realize that Archer rejected Warburton. Henrietta is a reporter by profession and is a symbol of feminism in those days. Henrietta misjudges the feelings of noble people and calls Casper Goodwood “I’ve never seen an ugly man so handsome“, when he spoke about his desire to marry Isabel. Ralph, on the other hand, mixes with Henrietta and demands to know why Isabel refused Warburton. He practically blackmailed her to find out, but she gives him a rational answer. He knows very well. Isabel is well and wants to save her from her fate but cannot do anything because she is about to die. The playwright has turned him into a spectator while he contemplates Isabel’s life.

James has candidly disclosed a woman’s perspective on life, love, and marriage. Through Casper Goodwood, he shows us the respective gestures of single and married women. They have a code of conduct to follow. The lines, “A single woman, a girl your age, is not independent. There are all kinds of things you can’t do. She is hampered at every turn. ” These lines show the person’s open ancestry. So the fact of allowing that she has happiness and dangers is another patriarchal morsel that he wants to feed her from. This is exactly what Isabel dislikes, but her fate takes an ugly turn when she marries Gilbert Osmond, the archetypal villain, his partner Madame Merle and an innocent daughter.