[Brief synopsis of The Portrait of a Lady, for those who have not read it: Isabel Archer, a middle-ish class American, is taken under the wing of her aunt, brought to England, and eventually made an heiress by her aunt’s husband. She is celebrated for her charm, intelligence, and beauty, and rejects the suit of several eligible and upstanding young men while simultaneously forging a friendship with and coming under the influence of a Mme. Merle. While touring the continent, Mme. Merle introduces Isabel to Gilbert Osmond, an aloof and intriguing ex-pat, whom we suspect of being a fortune hunter, and whom she eventually marries. Osmond becomes a jealous and sneering tyrant who torments Isabel incessantly. Isabel eventually finds out that Osmond’s motherless daughter is actually the daughter of Mme. Merle, his former mistress, and that she has been manipulated for her money. Around this time, a former suitor who is still in love with her tries to convince her to leave Osmond, but Isabel is convinced that the bond of marriage is an unbreakable one, and, though the end of the book is open to speculation, she will likely live out her days persecuted by Osmond.]
____________________________________
According to Patterson and to Spivak, self-articulated identity or conscious selfhood is, at best, a constant struggle and, at worst, an impossibility. For Patterson, there is a subject who may act: “...subjectivity...has always been part of our history, albeit in different configurations and with different powers and values....it has often been experienced as being set in some form of opposition to both the past from which it emerges and the social world within which its destiny is shaped.” Yet, “this impeaches neither the fact of subjectivity itself nor its capacity to act within the world.”
Spivak is less sanguine, concluding that the subject is faced with a paradox: one cannot speak until one has a consciousness of and identity from which to speak and with which the interlocutor can interact; however, one cannot come into the consciousness of an identity except through speech and discursive action: “...post-structuralist theories of consciousness and language suggest that all possibility of expression, spoken or written, shares a common distancing from a self so that meaning can arise -- not only meaning for others but also the meaning of the self to the self. I have advanced this idea in my discussion of ‘alienation’. These theories suggest further that the ‘self’ is itself always production rather than ground....” This seems partially to be a chronological problem: for Spivak, the subaltern must be able to engage (discursively) with another (who listens) as a means of forming an identity while she also agrees with the Subaltern Studies Group’s contention that the speaker must be identified prior to entering into a discourse or prior to being able to engage attention/ a partner in discussion.
Perhaps both would agree that it is a delusion to assume that consciousness of identity will reflect the full truth of identity; that is, once we think we’ve expressed it, it will slither away, as the expression cannot account for everything that is included in one’s plenitude...among a group but also within a person. And, in this absence of forging an identity, either singly or as a community, “the public world becomes ever less conceivable as an arena of action" (Patterson 3).
Similarly, in The Portrait of a Lady, James understands that selfhood is elusive because subject to the “social world” and its systems, and the plot is driven by this assumption. Thus, his protagonist, Isabel Archer, is upon first encounter indefinite and in flux, and full of contradictions. She is an American, but one who leaves the United States. And, through her rejection of Lord Warburton and Ralph, both landed nobility and quintessentially English, as well as of Caspar Goodwood, a wealthy capitalist and thus, quintessentially American, she eludes either identity. Eventually, she chooses Gilbert Osmond, also an American, but a wandering dilettante of mixed parentage and uncertain morals who deliberately refuses citizenship in the country he’s settled in; he is forever unsettled.
The only clear characteristics that James ascribes to Isabel are beauty and intelligence, and he acknowledges that these are relative qualities, the perception of which is contingent on an ineffable quality in her (that is, charm; she is less classically beautiful than her sister, but much more admired and, though intelligent, confused). Her characterization, or lack thereof, as a woman and as a subject, dictates that her actionability is limited. But in her idealism, she doesn’t and willfully will not know this; that is, she so believes in her ability to act on her free will that she cannot conceive that each of her actions is not of her own determination. In this, she appeals: her contradictions and searchings are precisely what make her so present and real to the reader. And, like ourselves, she goes out into the world to shape, through experience, the self that she believes she will become but who has not yet coalesced. It is in this course of attempting to figure out who she is that Isabel meets Osmond, and -- perhaps in a glimmer of understanding that she will always remain elusive even to herself -- she finds in him a mystery and, thus, a complement.
The tragedy of the novel is that Isabel’s belief in her own self-determination is eventually exploited by those (read: Gilbert and Madame Merle) who are more aware of their inscription within a system. When Isabel becomes an heiress her wealth defines her against her will. That she has always been positioned in the world against her will would seem obvious to Patterson and Spivak, but as a person going through the world, Isabel (perhaps necessarily) maintains her belief that her actions and decisions are of her own making and that she is responsible for and to them. Indeed, to the degree that her naivete persists and whereby she refuses to consider that she is subject to powers outside of her self, she becomes a pawn of Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond and their ambition.
We can identify with and share in the woes of Isabel, who seems true and real as a character, not because she hangs together nicely, but precisely because she is inconstant/inconsistent and defies characterization and determinate identity. Despite her knowledge of her self always retreating, her belief in her independence is a necessary condition of being able to act -- and through action, she becomes who she is: deceived and undeceived at the same time: when she discovers the depth of Osmond's cynicism and manipulation (she has been married to Osmond for her money at the behest of her friend Madame Merle, thus losing faith in friendship and love at once) she understands too late that she is not in control. The distance between James’, Spivak’s and Patterson’s understanding of the world vs. Isabel’s is closed in the course of the novel.
____________________________________
According to Patterson and to Spivak, self-articulated identity or conscious selfhood is, at best, a constant struggle and, at worst, an impossibility. For Patterson, there is a subject who may act: “...subjectivity...has always been part of our history, albeit in different configurations and with different powers and values....it has often been experienced as being set in some form of opposition to both the past from which it emerges and the social world within which its destiny is shaped.” Yet, “this impeaches neither the fact of subjectivity itself nor its capacity to act within the world.”
Spivak is less sanguine, concluding that the subject is faced with a paradox: one cannot speak until one has a consciousness of and identity from which to speak and with which the interlocutor can interact; however, one cannot come into the consciousness of an identity except through speech and discursive action: “...post-structuralist theories of consciousness and language suggest that all possibility of expression, spoken or written, shares a common distancing from a self so that meaning can arise -- not only meaning for others but also the meaning of the self to the self. I have advanced this idea in my discussion of ‘alienation’. These theories suggest further that the ‘self’ is itself always production rather than ground....” This seems partially to be a chronological problem: for Spivak, the subaltern must be able to engage (discursively) with another (who listens) as a means of forming an identity while she also agrees with the Subaltern Studies Group’s contention that the speaker must be identified prior to entering into a discourse or prior to being able to engage attention/ a partner in discussion.
Perhaps both would agree that it is a delusion to assume that consciousness of identity will reflect the full truth of identity; that is, once we think we’ve expressed it, it will slither away, as the expression cannot account for everything that is included in one’s plenitude...among a group but also within a person. And, in this absence of forging an identity, either singly or as a community, “the public world becomes ever less conceivable as an arena of action" (Patterson 3).
Similarly, in The Portrait of a Lady, James understands that selfhood is elusive because subject to the “social world” and its systems, and the plot is driven by this assumption. Thus, his protagonist, Isabel Archer, is upon first encounter indefinite and in flux, and full of contradictions. She is an American, but one who leaves the United States. And, through her rejection of Lord Warburton and Ralph, both landed nobility and quintessentially English, as well as of Caspar Goodwood, a wealthy capitalist and thus, quintessentially American, she eludes either identity. Eventually, she chooses Gilbert Osmond, also an American, but a wandering dilettante of mixed parentage and uncertain morals who deliberately refuses citizenship in the country he’s settled in; he is forever unsettled.
The only clear characteristics that James ascribes to Isabel are beauty and intelligence, and he acknowledges that these are relative qualities, the perception of which is contingent on an ineffable quality in her (that is, charm; she is less classically beautiful than her sister, but much more admired and, though intelligent, confused). Her characterization, or lack thereof, as a woman and as a subject, dictates that her actionability is limited. But in her idealism, she doesn’t and willfully will not know this; that is, she so believes in her ability to act on her free will that she cannot conceive that each of her actions is not of her own determination. In this, she appeals: her contradictions and searchings are precisely what make her so present and real to the reader. And, like ourselves, she goes out into the world to shape, through experience, the self that she believes she will become but who has not yet coalesced. It is in this course of attempting to figure out who she is that Isabel meets Osmond, and -- perhaps in a glimmer of understanding that she will always remain elusive even to herself -- she finds in him a mystery and, thus, a complement.
The tragedy of the novel is that Isabel’s belief in her own self-determination is eventually exploited by those (read: Gilbert and Madame Merle) who are more aware of their inscription within a system. When Isabel becomes an heiress her wealth defines her against her will. That she has always been positioned in the world against her will would seem obvious to Patterson and Spivak, but as a person going through the world, Isabel (perhaps necessarily) maintains her belief that her actions and decisions are of her own making and that she is responsible for and to them. Indeed, to the degree that her naivete persists and whereby she refuses to consider that she is subject to powers outside of her self, she becomes a pawn of Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond and their ambition.
We can identify with and share in the woes of Isabel, who seems true and real as a character, not because she hangs together nicely, but precisely because she is inconstant/inconsistent and defies characterization and determinate identity. Despite her knowledge of her self always retreating, her belief in her independence is a necessary condition of being able to act -- and through action, she becomes who she is: deceived and undeceived at the same time: when she discovers the depth of Osmond's cynicism and manipulation (she has been married to Osmond for her money at the behest of her friend Madame Merle, thus losing faith in friendship and love at once) she understands too late that she is not in control. The distance between James’, Spivak’s and Patterson’s understanding of the world vs. Isabel’s is closed in the course of the novel.
Hey Aimee! You seem to be arguing that throughout the course of the novel, certain social interactions and economic circumstances serve to illuminate to Isabel the impossibility of self-determination, with the novel ultimately aligning itself with a Spivakian reading of subalterity and subjectivity. I like how you negotiate the "space" between Spivak's and Patterson's concepts of subjectivity using her indeterminateness. I wonder, though (keep in mind, this is an ignorant question--I haven't read the novel), must this realization of her "lack" of self-determinate "identity" necessarily be a tragedy? Just to play devil's advocate, can't we read this as a coming of age story, one in which the naive girl substitutes a falsely idealistic construction of love and friendship for a world-savvy one based on commitment (the only thing she CAN actually control)? As a love story, this novel sucks. But as a realistic "portrait of a lady," does it not do that lady justice by charting her evolution, in a way?
ReplyDelete