Isabel Archer is a free-thinking American with all of life before her when an opportunity comes for her to go abroad with her relatives. The book begins with everyone wondering: Who is Isabel and how will she develop? Isabel wonders herself and hopes to exercise her imagination and freedom in her travels, adding to her experience and thus perfecting herself. Her good friend Henrietta Stockpole is concerned that Isabel's choice to leave America and her suitor Goodwood will ruin her. When a large fortune is left to Isabel, she is burdened with the responsibility that comes with money. But when she meets Gilbert Osmond (an unpretentious, poor American who resides in Italy with his young daughter), through her friend Madame Merle, she decided to marry him because she believes that he is worthy of her inheritance. Other friends warn her against this marriage but she chooses to chart her own path, heedless of external light. Darkness overcomes our heroin when shadows of deception, greed and power plays threaten to snuff out Isabel's imagination and personal freedom. When she at last is faced with a chance to take herself back, James ends the book with no absolute conclusion, testing his readers; "Will you, too, seek to control Isabel's destiny or will you let her choose for herself?"
Climax: Very end when Goodwood kisses her at the bench. World opening up to her again, lightning, light, Goodwood's "intense identity in contrast to Osmond's duplicity. Paragraph ends "She had not known where to turn; she knew now. There was a very straight path." I believe here she regains her freedom and "light" or knowledge--though we do not know what she will do with it. Hence, I would argue that this book has resolution and is not logically exhausted.
Though not a foremost theme in the book, I think my favorite aspect of the novel was the friendship that Ralph and Henrietta extend to Isabel toward the end. So beautifully described after the chapters of treachery and oppression...as if to say, "Here is help, here is healing."
No comments:
Post a Comment