In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James borrows from Eliot, Austen, folktales and potboilers, but ‘the thing that he took from nowhere was Isabel Archer’. James transformed the 19th-century novel through his evocation of Isabel, a woman who wants and suffers in a profoundly new (and American) way.
Deborah Friedell and Colm Toíbín join Tom to discuss the novel that established Henry James as ‘the Master’. They dissect James’s and his characters’ complicated motivations, the significance of his 1905-6 revisions, and the ways in which a ‘primitive plot’ irrupts in a painstakingly subtle and stylish novel.
This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
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Further reading in the LRB:
Colm Toíbín on Henry James:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n01/colm-toibin/a-man-with-my-trouble
Ruth Bernard Yeazell on Henry James’s life and notebooks:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n01/ruth-bernard-yeazell/the-henry-james-show
James Wood on The Portrait of a Lady:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/james-wood/perfuming-the-money-issue
Next time on Novel Approaches: 'Kidnapped!' by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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