Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

The jacket copy of PORTRAIT OF A NOVEL claims that Henry James is “…widely considered to be the greatest American novelist.” Well, some of us may differ on this point. Furthermore, this jacket copy claims that James was “the bridge” between Victorian fiction and twentieth century modernism. Well, yet again, some might have a different position. Didn’t Virginia Woolf, after all, say “the bridge” was Conrad?Nonetheless, this jacket copy does rightfully state that PoaN, which is about the influences and activities in James’s life as he wrote THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, does combine criticism, biography, and travelogue (a cribiotrav!). And, the jacket copy does acknowledge that James already has had many distinguished biographers, who Michael Gorra does graciously reference.Anyway, no expert here; but PoaN does read like something new and does give readers like me, who are impatient with James’s style of prolixity and fastidious nuance, incentive to reread some of his novels. Even so, I am not sure my opinions will change, since the first sentence of TPoaL, which is often cited as great, is, for me, an excruciating fly-in-amber: “Under certain circumstances, there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”There are 24 chapters in PoaN. For this reader, the very best of these is “The Roccanera”, where Gorra makes his case that James is “the bridge” between literary eras. This chapter, btw, is largely a discussion of Chapter 42 in TPoaL. There, the ruthless and cunning Gilbert Osmond (an evil name, or what?) has requested that his wife Isabel Archer… well, never mind; but the point is that Osmond’s proposed gambit leads Isabel to question her life's choices and sense of self. In doing so, James writes a stream-of-consciousness tour de force that exceeds 40 pages.Observes Gorra: “No writer in English had yet offered so full an account of the inner life, and in remembering this chapter for his preface [to THE ART OF FICTION] he allowed himself, for once, to make an unqualified judgement—'It is obviously the best thing in the book.'”Other terrific chapters in this cribiotrav are: “Her Empty Chair”, which discusses the oeuvre and legacy of George Eliot; “Mr. Osmond”, which shows how a small genius for domestic arts can obscure wickedness; “The Magazines”, which explains how publishing operated in James’s era and how he made a living; and “Working in the Dark”, which follows James’s disastrous attempt to make money as a playwright.Gorra is obviously a James enthusiast. Even so, he recognizes that James lost some lucidity and some of his readership after writer’s cramp—a repetitive motion injury—forced him to begin to dictate his novels. He observes: “…starting the practice somewhere in the middle of WHAT MASSIE KNEW… Dictation made concision impossible, and the speaking-voice lead him into syntactic complications….” Here, for example, are a few lines from THE GOLDEN BOWL, a late work:“It wasn’t till many days had passed that the Princess began to accept the idea of having done, a little, something she was not always doing, or indeed that of having listened to any inward voice that spoke in a new tone. Yet these instinctive postponements of reflection were the fruit, positively, of recognitions and perceptions already active; of the sense above all that she had made at a particular hour, made by the mere touch of her hand, a difference in the situation so long present to her as practically unattackable. This situation had been occupying for months and months the very center of the garden of her life, but it had reared itself there like some strange tall tower of ivory, or perhaps some wonderful beautiful but outlandish pagoda, a structure plated…”Not for every taste, no? But thanks to Gorra, I’ll soon read about Isabel and try what is probably James’s greatest novel.Rounded up and recommended.

Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York City to philosopher Henry James Sr. He had four siblings. His younger brother William became a professor at Harvard. Henry James attended Harvard Law School before embarking for a writing career in Europe. He settled in England living in London and Rye. He also traveled and lived in Italy and in Paris. James wrote such famous novels as The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors, The Americans, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Tragic Muse and many others. He wrote excellent short stories and essays throughout a fifty year professional career. He became a British citizen in 1915 and died a year later. Dr. Michael Gorra examines how James wrote his masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady in 1881. The long novel tells the story of Isabel Archer, a native of Albany New York, who goes to Europe following her rejection of marriage proposals from American Casper Goodwood and British Lord Warburton. She is rich having inherited 7000.00 pounds. She makes a disastrous marriage to Gilbert Osmond. Gorra visits the scenes where James wrote his novels. He began the Portrait of a Lady in Florence. We also visit sites throughout Europe where James lived and worked. He was a homosexual and Gorra explores his relationships with lovers. We learn how James rejected the triple decker baggy monster Victorian novels and moved the English novel from the Victorian to the Modern novel. Gorra's book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is highly recommended for those wishing a deeper insight into the artistry of James and the art of literary construction. I had read Gorra's Faulkner and the Civil War and found this James book to be as intriguing and fascinating. One would love to sit in a class taught by Gorra in his position as English professor at Smith College. Highly recommended!

This excellent book is a revealing companion piece to Henry James’s A PORTRAIT OF A LADY but is not in itself a thoroughgoing study of the novel. I read it slowly, taking 10-15 page sips, often dazzled by the power of Gorra’s observations written in a prose that has muscle and cadence.The heroine of A PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Isabel Archer, is described by one of her brothers-in-law as being so original she’s like a creature “written in a foreign tongue.” Today’s readers won’t find her quite so strange; and to be sure, Gorra shows us that the novel is very much about Henry James himself. Gorra supplies profiles of the influential people who were close to the author, details James's work habits, and examines the book’s first appearance in serialized form (and how that might have, and did, affect the length and pace of the book’s all-important final chapters). Living as we do in the post 1990s, we can enjoy a screenwriter’s ability to pare down James’s lengthy work into a two-hour-plus film that covers most of the novel’s tragic dimensions. I’m referring to Jane Campion’s “A Portrait of a Lady,” an extraordinary experience in its own right.Like the evasive heroine Isabel Archer, Henry James had an aversion to marriage. In fact, he never patronized the institution. Isabel isn’t quite sure what she wants to do with her life and fears that marriage will compromise her freedom. Throughout his life, James had similar misgivings. Though he carried on a close relationship with Constance Fenimore Woolson (a relative of Fenimore Cooper) and was later on attracted to a young Norwegian sculptor (Hendrik Andersen), it’s doubtful that either of these relationships was ever brought to a full physical consummation. The Victorian master who was so accomplished at portraying inner emotions as well as the symbolism of sexual fears, may well have died a virgin.If there is a flaw in Gorra’s study, it may be found in the few places where the book seems to start and stop and then begin again, mainly because his method is not strictly chronological. However, most readers will agree that this biography of a novel is a five-star effort.

I’ve long been obsessed by Henry James. I’ve read all of his fiction, and much of his non-fiction as well, in the Library of America editions. I’ve read a half-dozen biographies of James, and the James family, and many of books about James’ work.So Michael Gorra’s Portrait of a Novel interested me right off the bat, even though I waited for the book to come out in paperback. Gorra set out to tell the story of The Portrait of a Lady, one of James’ finest novels, weaving a narrative talking about the novel, about Henry James’ life, especially when writing The Portrait, and about the times in which it was written and set.The result is fascinating. While Gorra’s critical discussion of the novel would be enough for a book, the way he manages to tell the story of much of Henry James’ life through its relationship with The Portrait of a Lady is impressive. This isn’t a full biography of James; the book opens with some background information about James’ early years, then moves on to show James at work on The Portrait. Throughout, you get a picture of what Henry James was doing in the novel, and how it related to his experiences.Gorra takes a Sainte-Beuvian approach, and rightly so. Not all of James’ works reflect experiences he had in his life, but many did. For example, Isabel Archer is partly based on Henry’s cousin, Minny Temple, who died aged 24 of consumption, in 1870. Isabel Archer is not diseased, but she does have the Emersonian independence that Temple had.Gorra bases much of his discussion of James and women on the interesting biography of James, A Private Life of Henry James, by Lyndall Gordon, looking at James’ relationship with Temple, but also his later relations with Constance Fenimore Woolson, who James met around the time he was writing The Portrait.Gorra goes beyond strict biography, giving insight into the way James published his work – with The Portrait of a Lady, and earlier novels, they were published as serials, which impacted the way they were constructed. He also looks closely at James’ later years, when he was revising his favorite works for the New York Edition, and discusses the changes he made to The Portrait, many of which gave much better insight into the characters and their motivations.Gorra adroitly sums up the message of The Portrait of a Lady:“She [Isabel Archer] learns that Her own life has been determined by things that happen before she was thought of, a past of which she was ignorant and that she only understands when it’s already too late.”This book is not a full biography of the fascinating life of Henry James; if you want that, the best bet is still to go back to Leon Edel’s pioneering work, which you can find used, or in a one-volume abridgment. Or check out this fascinating biography of the James family – one of the rare families to have two geniuses as siblings, William and Henry: House of Wits, by Paul Fisher.And go back and read The Portrait of a Lady in the original version or the later version, revised for the New York Edition. Or watch the movie with Nicole Kidman, who portrays Isabel Archer quite well.

Gorra's book is a wonderful extended introduction to The Portrait of a Lady, but it is so much more: it's a biography of Henry James, and a history of his milieu; it is also an effective introduction to some of James' more praised than read other novels. I, for one, have spent a wonderful few months revisiting the late novels (The Amabassadors, The Wings of a Dove - and The Golden Bowl in particular) with renewed pleasure and insight as a direct consequence of reading Gorra's book. In addition, subjects covered in other introductions that I usually skip have suddenly become relevant, interesting and enjoyable - bibliography, the impact of publishing by instalment, for example.But it's the personal response of the author to The Portrait of a Lady which makes the book so original, for the book is above all a subtle analysis of one sensitive reader's response to the novel. Too many academics take the view that the subjective is worse than irrelevant; that for criticism to be convincing and respectable it needs to be scientific, jargon heavy, impersonal and cold. As a consequence much critical writing has become remote from the human reality that its subjects have sought to engage with, and thus increasingly removed from and unread by anyone outside the academy. Indeed this is now how literature is taught, not just in universities but also in schools, whose role is to get children through next year's exams rather than introduce them to windows on the world to last a lifetime. But the writers of the very best secondary texts (Coleridge, James himself of course, Auerbach and - more recently - Bloom, Ellmann, the late Anne Barton - a personal selection, of course! - and now Gorra) remind us that literature is a human response to humanity. Implicitly they also demonstrate that writing about literature is itself an artistic act; that in writing about literature the subjective and objective should complement rather than confront each other; that the granting of pleasure is just as much the responsibility of the critic as well as it is that of the novelist - and that the personal response matters.This is an extraordinary book - one of the best books about literature, indeed one of the best books, I've read for years.

Simply one of the most beautiful and elegantly written examples of literary exploration - criticism is far too meagre a word here - it has ever been my pleasure to be absorbed by. Gorra guides us through the creation and revision of Portrait in exemplary detail and with never a dull moment - certainly one of the most readable books on James that has come my way. Highly recommended.

Looks good

This provides a marvelous background to the famous book 'The Portrait of a Lady'