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Isabel Archer's Double Exposure: A Repeated Scene in The Portrait of a Lady The significance of the scene in The Portrait of a Lady in which James first presents Isabel Archer after her marriage to Gilbert Osmond has been discussed by Juliet McMaster. McMaster shows how in this scene the view of Isabel framed by the doorway like a picture prophesies Isabel's sad fate as art object In Osmond's precious collection.' What needs to be added to this helpful insight is how James prepares for this scene when he Introduces Isabel for the first time in the novel. Isabel appears initially In the Portrait shortly after she has arrived at Gardencourt. As Ralph rambles aimlessly about the lawn, Isabel, "who had just made her appearance in the doorway," watches Ralph "for some moments before he perceived her" as a "tall girl in a black dress who at first sight looks pretty."2 The first time Isabel appears after her marriage to Osmond, she is rendered in strikingly similar terms. Rosier has come to Isabel to plead on his own behalf for the hand of Isabel's new step-daughter, Pansy, As he enters one of the rooms of Osmond's house, Rosier meets Isabel "coming out of the deep doorway. She was dressed In black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle." Isabel, "framed In the gilded doorway," is, Rosier concludes, "the picture of a gracious lady" (p. 303). The similarity of these double scenes Is clear enough. Besides the obvious repeated usage of the large doorway frame, there are also similar descriptions of Isabel as being tall, attractive, and dressed in black. In the later scene, however, Isabel Is a much more opulent figure. She is ennobled ("high and splendid," even radiant); resplendent In velvet cloth; standing in a "gilded" doorway; and, most importantly, now virtually a work of art, a "picture." But what does James gain by such duplication? To begin with, the two scenes serve nicely as structural devices. The first occurrence provides an apt narrratlve frame within which the novelist can highlight his protagonist the first time she appears by bringing her front and center and allowing her to linger there briefly while the reader absorbs her character. From this point, the first portion of Isabel's story—her life in Europe as a single American girl—reaches its unfortunate culmination In her marriage to Osmond. The second occurrence, fittingly, introduces Isabel as the second part of her story—her life as a married woman—opens. And, significantly, whereas the first scene shows Isabel on the threshold of a doorway that leads outside, suggesting her potential for a life of freedom and independence, the second portrays her completely indoors, Indicating her entrapment by Osmond. Isabel had earlier felt the "Introspection" by which she believed she could program her own progress toward perfection to be, "after all, an exercise in the open air" (p. 55), but it has only led her to confinement within the constricting frame of Osmond's world. The reader Is thus being subtly prepared for Isabel's final submission to Osmond at the end of the novel: just as the first part of her story climaxes with her fateful marriage to Osmond, so the second part—which begins with a scene dup I lcatlng the one that sets the first part In motion—will climax with her final capitulation to the wicked Osmond.3 Moreover, in the second scene the heightened, more opulent vision of Isabel than that in the first scene is ironically undercut by the lack of substantial Improvement ¡n her situation suggested by the repetition of scenic portrayal: in outward appearance Isabel may have gained something from her European experience, but in spiritual substance she has achieved, at best, stasis. "The independent !. "The Portrait of Isabel Archer," American Literature, 45 (March 1973), 50-66. 2. Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, ed. Leon Edel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), p. 25. Subsequent parenthetic references are to this edition. 3. Michael Routh's "Isabel Archer's 'Inconsequence': A Motif Analysis of The Portrait of a Lady," Journal of Narrative...

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