Biblical Archetypes of Settings in the Portrait of a Lady

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Biblical Archetypes of Settings in the Portrait of a
Lady
Ping Chen
Huaiyin Normal University
Huaian, China 223001
Abstract—The American writer Henry James (1843-1916),
is generally considered the master of the psychological realistic
novels during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The
Portrait of a Lady is universally acknowledged as his
masterpiece during his early writing career. It has aroused
much attention and received criticism in literary circle ever
since its publication in 1881. Many critics have adopted
various methods of criticism to figure out their own profound
interpretations of The Portrait. Yet few critics have employed
the archetypal method to analyze it, especially its setting. This
thesis just attempts to use Frye's archetypal criticism to probe
into the Biblical archetypes in the light and dark settings in
The Portrait. Therefore, archetypal analysis, especially the
Biblical archetypes, might be quite a helpful method to
discover the theme of the novel and to reveal Henry James"
religious view and his unique Jamesian salvation.
Keywords—The Portrait of a Lady; Biblical archetypes;
Jamesian salvation; rebirth
I. INTRODUCTION
The Portrait of a Lady is a great novel devoted by Henry
James to the world literature. The protagonist, Isabel Archer,
is generally considered one of the most brilliant females in
the world literary gallery. James" subtle revelation of its
heroine's consciousness and the device of psychological
realism to unfold the journey toward her self-discovery won
the novel great reputation. The British critic F. R. Leavis
commented that this great novel is "an original masterpiece",
which is "one of the great novels" in English (1955:126). Yet
few critics have employed the archetypal method to analyze
it, especially its setting. However, archetypal analysis,
especially the Biblical archetypes, might be quite a helpful
method to discover the motif of the novel and to reveal the
Henry James' religious view and his unique Jamesian
salvation.
II. THE ARCHETYPE OF SETTING
James first designs the certain circumstances where the
prideful heroine full of free appears. Joel Porte said that the
positive power was all, and that negative power, or
circumstance, was half (1983:196). That is both sobering and
consoling, for life is not simply swallowed up in
circumstance but rather that it is qualified by it, reduced by
half but not annihilated. (Porte 2007:3) The Gardencourt
represents "positive power", while the hell Palazzo
Roccanera represents "negative power". Like Eve, Isabel
chooses the dark place which is warned by all the relations.
A. Gardencourt: The Garden in Eden
Much like Genesis story, Henry James gives his
characters a setting at the very beginning of the story in The
Portrait of a Lady. Gardencourt is not in the bright and
hopeful morning, on the contrary, James portraits a shadowy
afternoon picture. The summer light had begun to ebb, the air
had grown mellow, and the shadows were long upon the
smooth, dense turf (Henry James 1999:17). Then James
sketches the shadows of an old man and two young men. On
the perfect lawn, they are killing the time by enjoying this
admirable setting and drinking the traditional English
afternoon tea. Actually it is the still picture, the old man is
dying, the two younger men, one is ill and will die before
long, and the other man is a falling British aristocracy. They
are shadows and backgrounds in The Portrait. That
necessity is insisted upon in the first three words of the novel
"Under certain circumstances" which acknowledge the
reality of a world not created by the self but independent and
sometimes governing. (Jonathan Freedman 1998:113) But
this merging garden is a declining, drowsy Eden. The night
will fall. Our heroine suddenly appears in such an unpleasant
lifeless circumstance, she will show them what really life is,
just like the old Touchett says: "the ladies will save us."(ibid:
23)
B. Palazzo Roccanera: The Hell
The setting where Isabel Archer and Gilbert Osmond first
meet each other is in Osmond's house, which locates in the
small super urban piazza, "where a clear shadow rested
below and a pair of light-arched galleries, facing each other
above caught the upper sunshine upon their slim columns
and the flowering plants in which they were dressed. There
was something grave and strong in the place; it looked
somehow as if, once you were in, you would need an act of
energy to get out" (ibid: 222). However, for Isabel, she never
thought of getting out, but only of advancing. In the dark
house, there is a pure innocent girl, Pansy, Osmond's
daughter. "The small figure stood in the high, dark doorway,
watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into
the brightness beyond the big portone, which gave a wider
dazzle as it opened" (ibid:275). Such a pure mind desires the
light in her life. But the place where she lives, also Isabel
lives, is "a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon" to
them. His "fastidious" father should be "immured in a kind
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of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman
name, which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and
violence, which was mentioned in "Murray" and visited by
tourists who looked, on a vague survey, disappointed and
depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the
piano Nobile and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in
the wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court
where a fountain gushed out of a mossy niche"
(ibid:313) .This is the very place where Isabel lives after
marriage, the lifeless house without the light of sunshine. But
the dark and massive structure dwelt in the very heart of
Rome, where Isabel desires to know.
Being nourished by the Italian scene was of course
central to James's imagination through his career. Though
James does not attempt to speculate further about the
significance of his Italian sojourn for the composition of
Portrait, people at least may notice a curious echo, in his
description of how Italy's "romantic and historic sites" draw
the artist "away from his small question to their own greater
ones," of a key scene late in the book: Isabel, in Chapter 49,
takes a ride alone in "old Rome" and is compelled by city's
ruins to consider the "smallness" of her own sadness in the "
large Rome record, and her haunting sense of the continuity
of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the
greater." And undoubtedly, this sense will console her for a
wretched marriage. James's belief in the capacity of Italy to
nurture a sense of the dear old sacred terror of life is evident
early and late in his work, and it is precisely this belief that
informs Isabel Archer's deepening consciousness and her
decision to return to Rome (ibid :12). Rome, then, is
presented quintessentially as the scene of self-investigation,
an incitement to examination of the secrets of the human
heart, with its complex yearning for both love and death.
(ibid:13) Her thought after knowing the truth: she finds her
own strength occurs in this intensely Virgilian moment in
Chapter 49 that marks culmination of her Roman experience.
(ibid: 23)
III. JAMESIAN SALVATION
From the archetype of setting, two different settings are
placed before Isabel, the light Edenic Gardencourt and the
dark, negative Palazzo Roccanera. In the light and dark scene,
there are two men with positive and negative powers who
play the crucial role in Isabel's two major decisions. Based
on the archetypal analysis of Isabel, she is doomed to choose
the dark life with the cruel husband. Being called a
psychological realist, Henry James is more concerned with
exploring beneath the surface of social life to probe the
complex motivations and unconscious desires that shape his
characters perceptions. The Jamesian salvation shines her
inner heart; she realizes her final and ultimate quest of
freedom.
A. Light and Darkness
The ray of light is God, with an inference of the light of
Heaven. Isabel's rejection of light and embracing of darkness
is just the manifestation of the writer's refusal of church and
her despair on God in his certain period of life. Henry James
conflict Christian views shows clearly in her heroine who is
far away from the Light but seeks the light in her own heart.
She believes that "if a certain light should dawn she could
give herself completely," but the image itself frightens her.
Nevertheless she finds herself attracted to the equivocal
"golden air" of Gilbert Osmond's early autumn. Though she
retreated before him, her imagination goes forward to meet
this obscure figure, yet, it hangs back, sensing that "there
was a last vague space it couldn't cross — a dusky, uncertain
tract which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous,
like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to
cross it yet." Isabel Archer turns away from the light and
walks steadily into the dusk. (Porte 2007: 5)
The agreeable but shadowy Gardencourt in England, in
Florence, the bright Palazzo Crescentini full of spring
sunshine, rooms are filled with warmth and perfume. Ralph,
though in awfully illness, appears in such bright settings.
Because he was the person with love in his heart, so he
brings the light. When Isabel tells him that she is going to
marry Osmond, Ralph expresses that he loved her without
hope, Isabel looks into "the sunny illness of the garden", and
she says that he "lives on air" (300). Therefore, Ralph, is
always in the light, and brings the light to his love. This is
what Christ does to his people.
Isabel chooses and admires the house which is the hell
without sunshine all the year, where her husband puts his
wife in the dark part of heart, and sends his daughter Pansy
back to the gloomy convent. Moreover he forbids her dear
daughter to appear in the sunshine. All these indicate that
Isabel's marriage life is in the morbid darkness.
B. Falling into Darkness with Love, Patience and Dignity
Based on the comparison of the light and the dark, there
are two ways before Isabel, one is to return to the marriage
but a very dark environment, and the other one is to stay at
light Gardencourt, or go with Goodwood. At first sight, two
ways are different, the way up and the way down. Actually,
the way up and the way down are one and the same. All the
signs indicate that she will definitely go back to her marriage,
because she thinks staying here is not "right", and it is a kind
of exception from life, which is against her original intention
of seeing life in person. She chooses falling into darkness
with dignity.
It is available to peep Isabel's inner mind and get the idea
of her desire of being saved. "This belief, for a moment, was
a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself sink and sink. In
the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order to
catch herself, to feel something to rest on." Though she has
inherited such a large amount of money, she is still feeling
unsafe; she still wants to find something to depend on. "The
confusion, the noise of waters, and all the rest of it, were in
her swimming head." According to the biblical archetype,
the image of water as a symbol for rebirth is then quite
apparent in the following descriptions. So had she heard of
those wrecked and under water following a train of images
before they sink". (499) The water is just purifying her
confused mind. "But when darkness returned she was free."
Thus, readers will be disappointed by Isabel's final choice of
falling into darkness again. However, unlike her first
decision of marring to Osmond, this decision to return to
Osmond is made before seeing everything clear. Staying at
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Gardencourt is not "right", eloping with Goodwood is the
last thing she will do in her life, because she thinks she has a
kind and sincere heart. The way up and the way down are
both in the dark, no one knows its end, but Isabel knows her
heart clearly now, choose the way up, her external world
would be bright, but her inner world would be in the dark
forever, while choose the way down, temporally, she would
be in the dark, but she holds her theory of morality and she
dares to face her conscious, therefore, she falls into darkness
with dignity and love.
C. Looking for Spiritual Eden
The Garden of Eden seems to be an ideal place with
simple and quiet life. There is no difficulties and confusing
problems to disturb and haut the mind of human beings. Life
there is safe and tranquil only if you can resist seduce from
the malicious and cunning snake. All good things are
perfectly preserved in the Garden of Eden which is exempted
from the polluting of the outside world where miserable
things come into exist and haut human beings all the time
when the ancestors of mankind, Adams and Eve were
excelled out of the golden place and driven to the wildness
after they disobeyed the LORD God's order, failing to resist
the tempt from the snake and swallowed the fruits from the
tree of wisdom. Simple and quiet life, plentiful fruit and clear
water, simple task as leisure, all the good things have been
blocked in the Garden of Eden which they were forced to
leave and defended for their returning. To close up that so-
called wisdom and let the heart and soul return to the Garden
of Eden firstly.
IV. CONCLUSION
Henry James first creates the setting for his heroine to be
and as a watcher and he watches her judgment and choices
and feels her inner heart in a moderate distance. This way of
writing is just like the God who creates his world for the man.
He first creates the outside world and places man into a
Garden of Eden to live. As a spectator, he watches how man
chooses to create his choice. Man chooses to eat the fruit of
tree of knowledge to be like God and Isabel also choose to
see life herself to gain knowledge, violating from the Ralph's
warning. God loves man and Jesus is sent to redeem man
from suffering. In The Portrait of a Lady, James creates a
character Ralph, Isabel's cousin to support her, enlighten her,
and redeem her. The story of Isabel Archer is the story of
man's Fall to suffer and redeemed. Therefore, reading The
Portrait of a Lady from a biblical archetype angle can find a
satisfactory way to explain why Henry James makes her
heroine to choose the "straight" path to go back to her
marriage. However, most of comments concentrated on
Isabel's pursuit of freedom and her tragic return to her
miserable marriage with little concern about the final return
which is, in fact, a real moral triumph in a young American
woman "affronting her destiny." (Henry James 1999:8) With
the biblical archetypal theory to study the text, it can be
argued that Isabel's final choice demonstrates Jamesian
moral salvation.
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