Portrait of a Lady and Realism

At first I thought that I knew where The Portrait of a Lady was going; rich European aristocrats running around Europe and courting the beautiful and self-sufficient (Or so James tells us) American, Isabel. She rejects Lord Warburton, much like her previous American suitors (most notably Caspar Goodwood), only to fall in love with Gilbert Osmond. Right when I thought the story was going to continue with a (clichéd) happy marriage, James turned the tables on me.

He instead decided to depict the situation realistically. The character of Osmond is not as it appears to Isabel, but is that which is suspected by her cousin (and unrequited lover) Ralph, who believes that Osmond is just acting in the way that Isabel wants. Their marriage quickly goes downhill, as the difference in their true natures are revealed, and Isabel is stuck in a loveless marriage with a man who only wanted access to her money.

Though it started less than realistically, Isabel being invited to her relatives’ English estate, being left a sizeable fortune by Mr. Touchett, and being courted by an English lord; as the book progressed, however, it became more true to life.

This really reminded me of Emile Zola’s Germinal, in that rather than focusing on a fanciful story, it was true to real life. Though James is branching towards realism and Zola referred to the style of realism that he developed as “naturalism” they are similar in their style. The biggest difference between the two and their style is the setting and characters. While The Portrait of a Lady concerns the wealthy well-to-do of Europe, Germinal focuses instead upon coal miners who make up the lowest rungs of the working class. Their approaches are similar though, as James presents the marriage between Osmond and Isabel as unhappy (which makes sense and is more likely than wedded bliss) Zola allows only one character to survive the climatic mine cave-in (which kills a number of the book’s central characters), they allow what would happen in the real world to occur, rather than what would give the stories a happy ending.

I also found interesting that not only would she be in an unhappy marriage (which is not necessarily unheard of in literature of the time) but that she refuses to leave Osmond though she is treated shabbily. She remains faithful to him, even though staying around him makes her miserable (and he is not faithful to her, as he is involved with Merle).

I have to say that this change of events made this book all the more interesting, when I feared it would be a cliché romance amongst the elite of British society.