Goodwood's Lie in The Portrait of a Lady

Goodwood's Lie in The Portrait of a Lady by Gordon Hutner, University of Wisconsin-Madison In trying to persuade Isabel to leave her husband and "trust" her fate to her imperious suitor, Caspar Goodwood invokes Ralph Touchett as his authority. Goodwood relates how this "fine man, one of the best" had "explained everything " and had implored the earnest lover to "Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let you" (PL 487). At this moment, Goodwood desperately seeks to win Isabel's attention now that she has begun to take "seriously enough" his claim that he can help her. Goodwood explains—"as if he were making a great point"—that Ralph's injunction came at their last conversation, and he intends this confidence to have a compelling effect. It seems to work, for once Isabel's immediate anger subsides—"You had no business to talk about me!"— she listens to his "mad" proposals. It does seem uncharacteristic, however, for Ralph to be so explicit, even indiscreet. Goodwood's urgent "great point" may well have led him to tell a lie. Ralph's authority certainly captures Isabel's interest. Instead of darting from the spot, she submits to Goodwood's plea for an audience. "Listening more than ever," she perceives that Caspar's previously "aimless, fruitless passion" is now infused with an "idea, which she scented in all her being." Her seeming capitulation emboldens Goodwood to persist in his suit: "But it doesn't matter! ... If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have known all the same. . . . You can't deceive me anymore; for God's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you." Here the reader should recall James's earlier comment, in chapter 48, which suggests that Goodwood has not been honest with Isabel and that Ralph never said anything like the imperative Goodwood credits to him. In a conversation about Isabel's dissembling her misery, Goodwood realizes that he has seen enough to know that she is playing a part and that he should now be "quite ready to go." Ralph responds that "it strikes me as about time you should." James then remarks, "And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel Osmond" (PL 416). Either James forgot this very definite statement or he included it purposefuUy. It is very doubtful that James nodded over this observation. In the New York Edition, he made four minor revisions in this page-long scene and one some seven lines later before making five changes in the page-long scene between Henrietta Stackpole and Countess Gemini that immediately foUows. Rather than overlook this detail, James must have paused to wonder whether he stiU wanted to keep it. Even if he had unwittingly left this contradiction in the 1880 version, now he could easily correct it. If he merely meant that this was the "only" conversation that Ralph and Caspar had at this time, he might have removed the ambiguity. Instead, James left the sentence, the last in the scene, intact, and he apparently wished to preserve its summary aspect. In revising the later scene, when Goodwood first ascribes to Ralph his understanding of what it will "cost" Isabel to leave Rome—"It's awful, what she'll have to pay for it!"—James makes only three Volume 8 142 Number 2 The Henry James Review Winter, 1987 changes concerning Goodwood's presenting himself as Ralph's confidant. None is particularly portentous, though the "point" of naming Ralph as sanctioning this appeal becomes Goodwood's "queer grim point": "I may tell you that, mayn't I? [Ralph] was such a near relation! ... I'd sooner have been shot than let another man say those things to me [about Isabel's deep misery]; but he was different; he seemed to have the right. It was after he got home—when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too" (PL 488). If Goodwood's claim to Ralph's authority is a lie, his argument becomes unsavory, even disgusting—perhaps also to himself, for at this moment he drops Ralph as his justification for importuning Isabel and relies on his...