earticle

영어

This essay is an analysis of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady in terms of marriage and search for female identity. James pursues the change of Isabel’s consciousness before and after her marriage which is the main theme of this book. There is a big difference between married Isabel and unmarried Isabel. She is a prideful, romantic, and curious girl before her marriage, but she shows a conspicuous change in her attitude toward life after her marriage. She becomes a passive, obedient, and subservient woman to her husband, Gilbert Osmond.
Isabel, who likes her freedom and independence, refuses her two suitors’ persistent proposals because she thinks that the marriage to them will limit and interfere with her own freedom and independence. Isabel rejects Lord Warburton’s proposal because she perceives herself as a captive animal in a vast cage. And she doesn’t accept Casper Goodwood’s proposal because she is afraid of his strong possessive manhood which may limit her freedom of mind. Isabel chooses Osmond as her husband in spite of other people’s concern and objection because she thinks that he will not hamper her independence. But her judgement proves wrong as Osmond’s hidden egotistic and oppressive character emerges. She lives a helpless and dependent life without her self-identity after her marriage. Though she realizes her marriage is her own mistake, she returns to her husband at the end of the book. James reveals his conservative ideology and antifeministic narrative strategy through Isabel's marriage and a negative change in
her life.