A Death, a Book, an Apartment: The Portrait of a Lady

James wanted to follow Eliot’s example in attempting to enter the spirit of a single character. He imagined a creation of a woman whom he might render in full, but in a novel that would be formally more pure than anything Eliot was capable of, a novel that would blend architectural perfection with unerring characterization. James used imagery associated with architecture throughout The Portrait of a Lady. In creating Isabel, James was concerned with consciousness rather than plot. James allowed the novels of Eliot, which placed a deeply intelligent and passionate woman at the center of a novel, to encourage him to make his young woman in Portrait even more deeply intelligent and even more subtly passionate.