Claim Now The Portrait Of A Lady [Penguin Twentieth Century Classics] (Annotated) Devised By Henry James Made Available In Readable Copy

had many wonderful moments while reading this book, moments when the writing halted the reading, when I had to pause and admire and wonder.

Moments when the book seemed to speak to my own experience as if it were written expressly for the girl who was me at twentytwo, causing me to wonder how Henry James could have guessed so well the presumptuous ideas I had about life and love at that early stage.


All of that is very personal, of course, and not necessarily of interest to other readers, but there were other moments in my reading of sitelinkThe Portrait of a Lady that better merit mention in a review.
I had read this book before, about twenty years ago, so although I knew the bare bones of the story, I remembered few of the details.
I certainly had no recollection of reading a particular scene from early in the story, the one in which Isabel Archer meets a stranger in her aunts house.

And yet there was something about the leadup to that scene that caught my attention this time: the house is very still because Isabels uncle is dying.
Out of the silence comes the sound of someone playing the piano, Wonderingly, Isabel makes her way toward the source of the harmony,
Those six words were like a bell ringing in my mind, I felt a sharpening of interest, an awareness of how pivotal this moment would be in the story.
I remember thinking: I've been reading this book with all senses on alert and this is my reward I've sensed the authors excitement at the turn his story is about to take.


There was another scene later in the book when I had a similar feeling of change about to happen: Isabel sits up late one night in Rome pondering a difficult decision, indeed pondering all the decisions in her life so far.
The reader watches with her

and wonders how she will act, And wonders again when she finally does,

There are other major shifts in the narrative but none stood out for me quite the way those two did.
In fact, Henry James purposely avoids describing the most significant shift of all, by skipping a threeyear section of Isabels life completelywhich is a very effective narrative device of course, introducing both surprise and suspense in a story that has only a sixyear span in total.

As a reader I appreciated both strategies: the emphasis he seemed to place on some scenes and the complete omission he allowed to others.
It was all very wonderful,

In fact this book has revised my idea of what wonderful means, 'The Portrait of a Lady' is vying for a place as the highlight of my Henry James reading year even though sitelinkThe Ambassadors was already firmly camped in that position.
I've decided they can be the joint highlightthey have a lot of wonderfulness in common,

When I finished 'The Portrait', I turned to HJsappendix and found a paragraph about his concerns for the reader.
He writes that he has purposely piled brick upon brick for our benefit, carefully including the details that will enable us to grasp the totality of his creation.
And among those details, he mentions two in particular, keystones in the building of the story as it were.


The first is the piano scene I described earlier, He speaks of the rare chemistry of that scene in which Isabel recognizes that a huge change is about to happen in her life.
I felt really validated as a reader to have been aware in advance of the significance of what I was about to read, and so I wasn't surprised when his other pivotal scene turned out to be the one where Isabel sits up late into the Roman night, pondering her decisions.
This is the sixteenth Henry James book I've read in six months, Perhaps I've learnt something of the way his writers mind works!

More confirmation of that possibility came when he began to discuss the shape of this novel.
He continues to speak in terms of bricks and architecture and proportions, and he says that of all his novels, 'The Portrait' is the best proportioned with the exception of a novel he was to write twentytwo years later: sitelinkThe Ambassadors.
Alongside a certain roundness in shape which they share, he finds they also share a kind of supporting beam or rib that runs through them.
This rib is made from two minor but key characters, Henrietta Stackpole and Maria Gostrey, Both seem extraneous to each story at first glance yet both are central to the architecture of their particular story.
I remember noting that Maria Gostrey was the thread that allowed me to find my way through the labyrinth that was 'The Ambassadors' so it was wonderful to hear Henry James confirm that, and underline the links between the two books as well.

I was also reminded that I had begun to look at his books in terms of architecture while reading sitelinkThe Wings of the Dove, so I really appreciated his architectural metaphors.


In fact the appendix left me amazed and wondering at every turn, In the updates, I quoted part of a paragraph on his theories about the house of fiction.
I'd like to quote the whole thing here because it is really worth readingand it provided me with huge insights into some Gerald Murnane books I've puzzled over in the past, sitelinkThe Plains and sitelinkInland, and offered a strong desire to read Murnane's sitelinkMillion Windows:

The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a milliona number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will.
These apertures, of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than we find.
They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life.
But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a fieldglass, which forms, again and again, for observation, a unique instrument, insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct from every other.
He and his neighbors are watching the same show, but one seeing more where the other sees less, one seeing black where the other sees white, one seeing big where the other sees small, one seeing coarse where the other sees fine.
And so on, and so on there is fortunately no saying on what, for the particular pair of eyes, the window may NOT open “fortunately” by reason, precisely, of this incalculability of range.
The spreading field, the human scene, is the “choice of subject” the pierced aperture, either broad or balconied or slitlike and lowbrowed, is the “literary form” but they are, singly or together, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher without, in other words, the consciousness of the artist.
Tell me what the artist is, and I will tell you of what he has BEEN conscious.
Thereby I shall express to you at once his boundless freedom and his “moral” reference,



This book is the final one in myHenry James season and I can't think of a better title to finish on.
But in every ending there are beginnings'The Portrait' has led me to another book: Henry James says he took the slight personality, the mere slim shade of an intelligent but presumptuous girl and created what he called an ado about Isabel Archer.
That reference has prompted me to go back to Shakespeare and read sitelinkMuch Ado About Nothing.

I do love when one book leads to another!,