Read Portrait of A Novel Online
Authors: MICHAEL GORRA
314—
Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative
: The standard account of Kant’s relevance to the novel belongs to William Gass, “The High Brutality of Good Intentions,”
Accent
18 (Winter 1958). Reprinted in Bamberg. My quotation from the philosopher is drawn from Gass.
314—
his secondary characters
: See Alex Woloch,
The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
316—“
have all eternity
”: P, 783.
316—“
lost all her shame
”: P, 784.
316—“
I never thanked
”: P, 784.
316—“
that was not
”
. . .
“
ruined
”: P, 785.
317—“
I shall be
”: P, 784.
318—“
a sort of
”: To William Dean Howells, 17 August 1908.
318—
“
self-occupied
”: LFL, 422; the friend in question was Charles Eliot Norton’s daughter Sally.
319—
October 1908 his first royalty statement
. James notes the figure in a letter to J. B. Pinker, 1 April 1909.
319—“
black and heavy
”: To William Dean Howells, 27 May 1910.
320—“
the frustration of all
”: E5, 440.
320—“
William cannot
”: E5, 442.
320—“
Bad day[s]
”: N, 314–15.
320—“
wholly unfit
”: To Edith Wharton, 10 June 1910.
321—
morphine and milk
: For details of William’s death, see Richardson,
William James
, 520.
321—“
His extinction
”
. . .
“
pride
”: To Thomas Sergeant Perry, 2 September 1910.
321—“
ramification of old
”: To Henry James III, 16 July 1912.
321—“
difficult &
unprecedented
”: To Mrs. William James, 13 November 1911.
321—“
I recover it
”: A, 207.
322—“
the past
”
. . .
“
memories
”: To Henry Adams, 21 March 1914.
322—“
undo everything
”: To Rhoda Broughton, 10 August 1914.
322—“
what the treacherous
”: To Howard Sturgis, 4 August 1914.
323—“
attachment and devotion
”: To H. H. Asquith, 28 June 1915.
323—“
bad sick week
”: To Edmund Gosse, 25 August 1915.
323—“
a regular hell
”: To Hugh Walpole, 13 November 1915.
324—“
sketchy state
”
. . .
“
sister
”: For what is called the “Deathbed Dictation,” see N, 581ff.
324—“
over the counterpane
”: E5, 559.
324—“
a dim, hovering
”
. . .
“
nothing
”: P, 787.
325—“
lying on
”: Ibid.
325—“
postponing, closing
”
. . .
“
obligations
”: P, 789.
325—“
Lady Flora
”: P, 780.
326—“
something important
”
. . .
“
purpose
”: P, 794.
326—“
that ghastly form
”: P, 797.
326—“
the world is all
”: P, 798.
327—“
The world is very small
”: Ibid.
327—“
to get away
”
. . .
“
feet
”: P, 797.
327—“
the confusion
”
. . .
“
free
”: P, 799.
327—“
but she knew
”: Ibid.
328—“
this was different
”
. . .
“
strange
”: PNY, 580.
328—
Goodwood’s kiss is no longer
: PNY, 581. The best account of Isabel’s relation to sexual passion, and of the novel’s conclusion as well, belongs to Dorothea Krook. See also Tessa Hadley,
Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
331—“
he looked up at her
”: P, 800.
331—“
liaison with her rejected lover
”: Hutton in Gard.
331—“
with an end
”: Oliphant in Bamberg.
331—“
feels the full force
”: N, 15. James’s 1883 words about the ending were recorded in a copy of the novel by its owner. See Supino,
Henry James: A Bibliographical Catalogue
, 135.
331—“
only to guess
”: PNY, 582.
332—“
started for Rome
”: P, 800.
332—“
obvious criticism
”: N, 15.
332—“
Really, universally
”: LC1, 1041.
333—“
complete in itself
”: N, 15.
333—“
all too faint
”: To A. C. Benson, 11 March 1898.
333—“
Nothing is my
”: To Jane Hill, 15 June 1879.
333—“
raise the individual
”: Henry James, “London Pictures,” in
The Painter’s Eye
, 213.
334—“
there is no greater
”: “John S. Sargent,” in
The Painter’s Eye
, 227–28.
334—“
There is really too much to say
”: PNY, 17.
INDEX
Abolitionism, 17, 18, 99, 126, 209
Acton, Lord, 61
Adam Bede
(Eliot), 57, 64–65, 195, 216
Adams, Clover Hooper, 40–42, 102, 143, 148, 258, 259
Adams, Henry, 40–41, 98, 102, 139, 143, 148, 149, 244, 258, 259
Adams, John, 115
Adriatic Sea, 166, 172
adultery, 90, 199, 303, 326–27
in Gustave Flaubert, 68, 195, 303
Aeneid
(Virgil), 231
aestheticism, 83, 84, 138
Agassiz, Louis, 18
Age of Innocence, The
(Wharton), 91, 149, 206–7
Albany, N.Y., 321
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 166, 173, 208
Alexander, George, 289–91
Allied powers, 323
Alps, 33, 101
American Academy, Rome, 319
American exceptionalism, 36, 114–15, 278
American literature, 17
British reaction against, 244–49, 267
future of, 31–32
literary history of, 34
local color and regionalism in, 129, 178, 246
novel of manners and, 26
The Portrait of a Lady
as, xvii
realist, 25–26
romances in, 36, 69
sentimental, 25
William Dean Howells on, 26
analytical method of characterization, 242–43
Andersen, Hendrik, xxii, 88, 297–98, 299, 304, 328
Anna Karenina
(Tolstoy), 113, 271, 303, 332
Anne, Queen of England, 99
Antietam, Battle of, 19
Archer, Isabel (char.), xv, xvii, 8, 81, 85–86, 103, 121, 131, 149, 151, 171–72, 173, 196, 198, 207, 214, 243, 244, 310–17, 321
American newness of, 270
appearance of, 7
character of, 6–11, 66–67, 75, 105–6, 115, 116–17, 242
clothes conversation of, 113–15, 163
as desiring to depart from past, 114
elements of HJ in, 50, 270
Europe’s meaning to, 126, 223
George Eliot’s influence on, 66
Gilbert Osmond’s fascination for, 134–37, 155–59, 162–64, 276, 311, 328, 329
Gilbert Osmond’s restrictions on, 162–64, 225, 230–31, 232–33, 234, 238, 269, 273, 274–75, 313, 325, 326
independence of, 4, 6, 51–54, 71, 75–76, 158, 161, 163, 223, 252, 315, 329–30
inner life of, 9, 175, 311, 313, 334
as a “lady,” 10–11, 224
limits on freedom of, xviii–xix, 69, 76, 111–12, 223–24, 238, 270–73, 277–79, 283, 295, 326–27
marriage of, 136, 159–61, 164, 166, 214, 221, 222–38, 271–77, 303–4
marriage plot resisted by, xviii, 9, 69–76, 106–7, 109, 112, 113, 157, 160
Minny Temple as original of, 27, 46–50
power of knowledge for, 279
Ralph Touchett’s bequest to, 110–11, 114, 125, 134, 137, 162, 225, 272–73, 279, 316–17, 327
Ralph Touchett’s relationship with, 50–51, 54
reactions of others to, 6–7
reflections on married life by, 229–38
return to Rome by, 327–34
in Rome, 141–43, 149, 150, 174, 222, 225–26, 269–70, 271, 312, 325
sadness of, 213, 269, 271, 324–25
separation considered by, 273, 333
sexual desire of, 234–36, 237–38, 327–30
spontaneity and individuality of, 6, 67, 271
on taste vs. wealth, 137
travels of, 161
as voice of American exceptionalism, 114–15
Arno, 122, 126, 149
Arnold, Matthew, 158, 210
Arthur, Chester A., 259
“Art of Fiction, The” (Besant), 246
Aspects of the Novel
(Forster), 248–49
Asquith, H. H., 323
Assommoir, L’
(Zola), 39, 200–201, 252
Athenaeum, 79, 97–98
Athenaeum,
220
Athens, 180
Atlanta Constitution,
220
Atlantic Monthly,
xiv, xix, 13, 23, 25, 37, 98, 129, 130, 199, 265, 305
“Contributors’ Club” in, 210, 218, 250
HJ serialized in, 24, 34, 43, 44, 71, 100, 101, 103, 104, 130, 166, 173, 208–13, 215, 217–21, 222, 284
The Portrait of a Lady
reviewed in, 241
Austen, Jane, 5, 35, 57, 68, 72, 75, 192, 234
Austria, 166
autocracy, 315
Avignon, 166
Baden-Baden, 39
Bad Nauheim, 320
Baedeker, 147, 166
Bakunin, Mikhail, 126
Baldwin, William, 183
Balzac, Honoré de, 35, 52, 58, 68, 98, 113, 192, 314–15
Barberini, Colonel, 145
Barings Bank, 49
Bayreuth, 92, 93, 94
Beerbohm, Max, 300
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 111
Belgium, 322, 323
Bellosguardo, 122, 133, 135, 138, 226, 277
Bennett, Arnold, 290
Benson, A. C., xxii
Berlin, 80
Besant, Walter, 246
Bien Public, La,
200–201
bigamy, 195
“Birthmark, The” (Hawthorne), 315
Bismarck, Otto von, 33
Blackmur, R. P., 318
Blackwood’s,
194, 241–42, 244, 331
Bleak House
(Dickens), 68, 131, 215, 216, 218
Boboli Gardens, 121
Bologna, 126
Boott, Elizabeth (Lizzie), 41, 123, 128, 131, 138, 148, 176, 180, 321
Boott, Frank, 123, 128, 131, 138–39, 148, 176, 180, 182, 183, 321
Bosanquet, Theodora, 88, 101, 310, 312, 321, 324
Boston, Mass., xv, 18, 23, 37, 40, 93, 150, 209, 210, 240, 257, 258, 259, 260, 263, 265, 281, 331
Charles Dickens’s visit to, 25
“Boston Mutual Admiration Society,” 246
Boston Public Library, 170–71
“Boule de Suif” (Maupassant), 197
Bright, John, 104
Brighton, 103
British Empire, 210
Bronson, Katharine De Kay, 137, 168, 185
Brontë, Anne, 208–9
Brontë, Charlotte, 68, 131, 208–9, 241
Brontë, Emily, 208–9
Brooke, Dorothea (char.), 7, 9, 52, 63–65, 68–70, 142, 217, 220, 234–35, 244, 271, 331–32
Brooks, Peter, 198
Brownell, W. C., 241
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 121, 146, 149, 150
Browning, Robert, 8, 102, 121, 146, 149, 150, 169, 265
“Buried Life, The” (Arnold), 158
Burne-Jones, Edward, 61
Burroughs, John, 210
Byron, Allegra, 178
Byron, Lord George Gordon, 172, 178, 209
Cable, George Washington, 244
Cairo, 180
California, xv
Californian
(San Francisco), 241
Cambridge, Mass., 23, 24, 89, 93, 101, 103, 123, 148, 150, 199, 299, 318
Cambridge Cemetery, 257, 261, 263, 324
Campagna, 269
Canada, 49
“Candour in Fiction,” 195
Caravaggio, 143, 225
Carlyle, Thomas, 210, 265
Casa Semitecolo, 181, 188
categorical imperative, 314–15
Cenci, Beatrice, 226
Cenci, The
(Shelley), 226
Centro Studi Americani, 226
Century,
209, 243, 282
Cervantes, Miguel de, 192
Chanel, Coco, 197
characters, characterization:
analytical method of, 242–43
of Constance Fenimore Woolson, 130–31
of George Eliot, xxiv, 7, 52, 244, 271, 276
of HJ, 40, 46–47, 74–75, 139, 242–43
of Ivan Turgenev, 39–40
novel of incident vs. novel of, 248–49
Charleston, S.C., xx
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 59
Cheever, John, 86, 143–44
Cheltenham, 180
Child, Theodore, 249–50
China,
RMS, 12
Christian socialism, 209
Christmas Garland, A
(Beerbohm), 300
Civil War, U.S., xv, xx, 8, 23, 40, 109, 259, 265
black Union regiments in, 18
James family and, 16, 17–19, 77, 322–23
Clairmont, Claire, 178–79
Claudian Aqueduct, 153
Claudius, Emperor of Rome, 153
Clay & Taylor, 240
Coburn, Alvin Langdon, xxiii,
1,
55
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 153
Colonna, Vittoria, 136
Compton, Edward, 287–89
Compton Comedy Company, 287
Concord Academy, 17
Confederate States of America, 40
Conrad, Joseph, xxii, 218–19, 231, 237, 253, 280, 300
consciousness, 199, 302–3, 304
Cooper, James Fenimore, 69, 122, 128
copyright:
international, 42, 212–13
and New York Edition, 319
Cornhill,
104, 209, 212
Cornwall, 45
Cortona, Pietro da, 225
Country Life,
48
Covent Garden, 99
Crane, Stephen, 246, 330
Crime and Punishment
(Dostoevsky), 251
Cross, John, 57–60
biography of George Eliot by, 65
HJ’s letters to, 57, 59, 61
Curtis, Ariana, 168–69, 182
Curtis, Daniel, 168–69
Daniel Deronda
(Eliot), 8, 58, 63, 66, 68–69, 231, 276
Dante Alighieri, 32, 94
Darwin, Charles, 209
Daudet, Alphonse, 198, 199, 243, 249–50
Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, The,
334
David Copperfield
(Dickens), 215, 216
Débâcle, La
(Zola), 251–52
Democracy
(Adams), 244
Dencombe (char.), xiv
Detroit Free Press,
220
Dickens, Charles, 61, 68,, 98, 99, 131, 152, 202, 315
American visit of, 25, 89
audience of, xix, 202, 215, 241
HJ on, 26, 58, 244–45, 247
serialization and, 209, 215, 216, 218, 231
structure of novels of, 63–64, 216, 218, 231, 247
Dictionary of National Biography,
49
divorce, 273
G. H. Lewes unable to obtain, 58
in
What Maisie Knew,
294–95
dollar princesses, 109
Domenichino, 225
Don Juan
(Byron), 172
Donne, John, 299
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 251
Douglas, Lord Alfred, 83
Dreiser, Theodore, 246
Du Maurier, George, 286
Duncan, Isadora, 126
Edel, Leon, 13, 18, 131, 260–61, 289
Edinburgh, 320
Egypt, 161
elections:
of 1852, 32
of 1860, 17, 23
of 1872, 134
of 1877, 101
Eliot, George, xvi, 8–9, 75, 142, 195, 241, 242, 314
appearance of, 62
characterization in, xxiv, 7, 52, 244, 271, 276
compelling talk by, 61–62
Cross’s marriage to, 57–60
death of, 61, 245, 264
HJ’s critical and admiring opinion of, 26, 62–67, 68, 82, 96, 267
HJ’s visits to, 61
marriage in novels by, 68–70, 231–32, 325, 331–32
serialization and, 212, 216–17, 218
structure in novels of, 231–32, 234–36
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 148, 271
death of, 264
HJ on, 265
self-reliance as concept of, xix, 52, 114–15, 252, 315
Engelberg, 208
England, 12, 101, 180, 181, 227, 305, 323
divorce in, 273
HJ in, 27, 28, 37, 165, 192
English Review,
218
Europe, 304
American novelists and, 31–32
Americans in, 145–46, 149–54
anonymous sexuality in, 90
coming to terms with, 259
HJ’s American acquaintances in, 123
Madame Merle as voice of, 114
national traditions in, 32
significance of, 114–15, 126, 278, 305
Evans, Isaac, 59
Evans, Mary Ann,
see
Eliot, George
Evans, Robert, 58
Examiner,
220–21
expatriates, 145–46, 149–54
dollar princesses, 109
Europeanized, 79
in Florence, 167, 177
Gilbert Osmond as exemplary type of, 124, 163
HJ as, xii, xv, xxii, 31, 34, 54, 77–78, 79, 80, 95, 102, 126, 197, 239–40, 281, 305
in HJ’s novels, 37, 134, 280, 283, 300–301, 303, 309
in Italy, 125–26, 138
in Paris, 146, 165–66, 169
in Rome, 138, 142, 145, 149–50, 166, 167, 226, 319
in Venice, 167, 168–69
False Dawn
(Wharton), 139
Far from the Madding Crowd
(Hardy), 328
Father and Son
(Gosse), 83
Fathers and Sons
(Turgenev), 39
Faulkner, William, 156, 231, 237, 302, 321
Fields, Annie, 37
Fields, J. T., 23, 24
Fiesole, 38, 127
54th Massachusetts Infantry, 18
Figaro, Le,
166
Fille Elisa, La
(Goncourt), 199
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 278
Flaubert, Gustave, 9, 78, 107, 192, 202
adultery as theme of, 68, 195, 303
death of, 264, 267
James Fitzjames Stephen on, 193–94
literary descendants of, 250–51
literary gatherings of, 39, 90, 96, 197–201, 249–50, 265–66
Fletcherizing, 319
Florence, 138, 141, 148, 155, 158, 159, 160, 176, 180
expatriates in, 167, 177
Gilbert Osmond in, 133–34, 142, 157, 196
HJ in, xviii, xix, xxiv, 28, 38, 41, 42, 44, 92, 94, 126–28, 130–32, 166, 173, 176–79, 181, 258, 321
Michael Gorra in, 121–24, 138, 177
Nathaniel Hawthorne in, 122, 125–26
partial modernization of, 121–22
“Florentine Experiment, A” (Woolson), 130–31
Florian’s, 168
Florida, xv, 27, 308, 309
Forster, E. M., 248–49
Fourier, Charles, 14
France, 12, 39, 166, 321
HJ’s works little known in, 250
manifestos in, 245
novels in, 193–204, 244, 246, 249, 250–53
political upheaval in, 33
theater in, 287
Franco-Prussian War, 33, 197, 252
Freud, Sigmund, 75, 252, 281
Fullerton, Morton, 79, 88–89, 298–99