LITERARY TEXT: Novel

The Portrait of a Lady

By: Henry James
Isabel Archer, from Albany, New York, is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia's
rich husband, Daniel, at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel's father. There, Isabel meets
her uncle, her friendly invalid cousin Ralph Touchett, and the Touchetts' robust neighbor, Lord
Warburton.
Isabel later declines Warburton's sudden proposal of marriage. She also rejects the hand of Caspar
Goodwood, the charismatic son and heir of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Although Isabel is drawn to
Caspar, her commitment to her independence precludes such a marriage, which she feels would demand
the sacrifice of her freedom.
The elder Touchett grows ill and, at the request of his son, Ralph, leaves much of his estate to Isabel upon
his death. With her large legacy, Isabel travels the Continent and meets an American expatriate, Gilbert
Osmond, in Florence. Although Isabel had previously rejected both Warburton and Goodwood, she
accepts Osmond's proposal of marriage, unaware that it has been actively promoted by the accomplished
but untrustworthy Madame Merle, another American expatriate, whom Isabel had met at the Touchetts'
estate.
Isabel and Osmond settle in Rome, but their marriage rapidly sours, owing to Osmond's overwhelming
egotism and lack of genuine affection for his wife. Isabel grows fond of Pansy, Osmond's presumed
daughter by his first marriage, and wants to grant her wish to marry Edward Rosier, a young art collector.
The snobbish Osmond would prefer that Pansy accept the proposal of Warburton, who had previously
proposed to Isabel. Isabel suspects, however, that Warburton may just be feigning interest in Pansy to get
close to Isabel again, and the conflict creates even more strain within the unhappy marriage.
Isabel then learns that Ralph is dying at his estate in England and prepares to go to him for his final hours,
but Osmond selfishly opposes this plan. Meanwhile, Isabel learns from her sister-in-law that Pansy is
actually the daughter of Madame Merle, who had had an adulterous relationship with Osmond for several
years.
Isabel pays a final visit to Pansy, who desperately begs her to return someday, which Isabel reluctantly
promises to do. She then leaves, without telling her spiteful husband, to comfort the dying Ralph in
England, where she remains until his death.
Goodwood encounters her at Ralph's estate and begs her to leave Osmond and come away with him. He
passionately embraces and kisses her, but Isabel flees. Goodwood seeks her out the next day but is told
she has set off again for Rome.
The ending is ambiguous, and the reader is left to imagine whether Isabel returned to Osmond to suffer
out her marriage in noble tragedy (perhaps for Pansy's sake), or if she is going to rescue Pansy and leave
Osmond.
Realism Approach
Part of this influence has been through the type of realism that employs. On the other hand, the most
frequent criticism has been that he is not realistic enough. Many critics have objected that does his novels
are filled with people whom one would never meet in this world.
Actually, realism is of a special sort. By the early definitions, The early definitions stated that the novelist
should accurately depict life, and the novel should "hold up a mirror to life"; in other words, the early
realist was supposed to make an almost scientific recording of life.
But James was not concerned with all aspects of life. There is nothing of the ugly, the vulgar, the
common, or the pornographic in James. He was not concerned with poverty or with the middle class who
had to struggle for a living. Instead, he was interested in depicting a class of people who could afford to
devote themselves to the refinements of life.

It explained there that realism in terms of its opposition to romanticism. For the realistic represents
those things which, sooner or later, in one way or another, everyone will encounter. But the romantic
stands for those things which, with all the efforts and all the wealth and facilities of the world, we can
never know directly. Thus, it is conceivable that one can experience the same things that the characters
are experiencing in a James novel; but one can never actually encounter the events narrated in the
romantic novel.
Wonder Woman
Feminism Approach
Wonder Woman, or Diana Prince, as her civilian associates would know her, first appeared as a character
in DC Comics in 1941, her creator supposedly inspired by the feminism of the time, and specifically the
contraception pioneer Margaret Sanger. Being able to stop people getting pregnant would be a cool
superpower, but, in fact, her skills were: bullet-pinging with bracelets; lassoing; basic psychology; great
strength and athleticism; and being half-god (the result of unholy congress between Zeus and Hyppolyta).
The 1970s TV version lost a lot of the poetry of that, and was just all-American cheesecake. Gal Gadot’s
Wonder Woman made her cinematic debut last year in Batman v Superman, and this first live-action
incarnation makes good on the character’s original premise, the classical-warrior element amped up and
textured. Her might makes sense.
Yes, she is sort of naked a lot of the time, but this isn’t objectification so much as a cultural reset: having
thighs, actual thighs you can kick things with, not thighs that look like arms, is a feminist act. The whole
Diana myth, women safeguarding the world from male violence not with nurture but with better violence,
is a feminist act. Casting Robin Wright as Wonder Woman’s aunt, re-imagining the battle-axe as a battler,
with an axe, is a feminist act. A female German chemist trying to destroy humans (in the shape of Dr
Poison, a proto-Mengele before Nazism existed) might be the most feminist act of all.
Women are repeatedly erased from the history of classical music, art and medicine. It takes a radical mind
to pick up that being erased from the history of evil is not great either. Wonder Woman’s casual rebuttal
of a sexual advance, her dress-up montage (“it’s itchy”, “I can’t fight in this”, “it’s choking me”) are also
feminist acts. Wonder Woman is a bit like a BuzzFeed list: 23 Stupid Sexist Tropes in Cinema and How
to Rectify Them. I mean that as a compliment.
Yet Wonder Woman is not a film about empowerment so much as a checklist of all the cliches by which
women are disempowered. So it leaves you feeling a bit baffled and deflated – how can we possibly be so
towering a threat that Hollywood would strive so energetically, so rigorously, for our belittlement? At the
same time, you are conflicted about what the fightback should look like. Because, as every reviewer has
pointed out, Wonder Woman is by no means perfect.
I find it impossible to imagine the feminist action-movie slam-dunk; the film in which every sexist
Hollywood convention, every miniature slight, every outright slur, every incremental diss was slain by a
lead who was omnipotent and vivid. That film would be long and would struggle for jokes. Just trying to
picture it leaves you marvelling at the geological slowness of social progress in this industry, which finds
it so hard to create female characters of real mettle, even when they abound in real life. Wonder Woman,
with her 180 languages and her near-telepathic insights, would stand more chance of unpicking this
baffler than Superman or Batman. But the answer, I suspect, lies in the intersection between the market
and the culture; the more an art-form costs, the less it will risk, until the most expensive of them –
blockbusters – can’t change at all. In an atmosphere of such in-built ossification, the courage of Wonder
Woman is more stunning even than her lasso.
When you live by the rules of others, you’re not free. We behave in a certain way because we think
that’s what we should do. We spend time with people we don’t like. We take jobs we’re not good at. We
stay in relationships with people we’re not compatible with.

That’s all because we don’t realize we have power. You are the maker of your own life. Everything that
has happened to you is because you made certain decisions.

When you’re unhappy, it’s because of your own doing. You have absolute power to live the way you
desire. People who don’t agree with that are fearful. They use excuses like, “that’s easier said than
done.” Or they’ll cry, “easy for you to say.” And then they spit out one excuse after the other.

Personal freedom means you are the ruler of your own kingdom. Until you recognize that, you can never
be free.

So change the way you look at life. Whatever you do, do it because you want to. And live an honorable
life.

Give up the crap, seek the truth, suffer voluntarily, do hard things, save your money, build real
relationships.

That’s the price of being free. It’s worth it.