Gender, Judgment, and Presumptuous Readers: The Role of Daniel in The Portrait of a Lady

Gender, Judgment, and Presumptuous Readers: The Role of Daniel in The Portrait of a Lady by Sharon Baris, Bar-Ilan University, Israel When James declares in his Preface to The Portrait of a Lady that he intends to organize "an ado" about Isabel and goes on to suggest in the next paragraph that among her literary precursors Portia in The Merchant of Venice is the "very type and model of the young person intelligent and presumptuous" (PL 9), he combines two Shakespeare references to focus upon a central crisis of gender and judgment in his novel, one that considers the way that Portia, the heroines of Much Ado About Nothing, and Isabel all "matter."1 In James's novel, as in his Shakespeare references, a vexing problem of "some strange misprision in the princes" (Much Ado IVi.186) afflicts young women, as they are valued by the roU of some "false dice" in the games played according to the governing cultural assumptions at the courts or in the secluded gardens of their world. One remedy in Much Ado might be, as Beatrice wails, a corrective gender switch ("O God that I were a man!" [IV.i.308]) that would allow her and her counterpart heroine to fulfill the powerful implications of the name Hero, even as in The Merchant of Venice Portia literally dons a judge's robes in order to become, as an amazed Shylock declares, "A Daniel come to judgment!" (IV.i.223).2 Given Isabel's Shakespearean and other precursors highlighted in the Preface to The Portrait, it is thus possible to sec how James would present his frail vessel as a woman similarly beset by strange misprision, and she, too, must work to usurp the role of judge in the world of Gardencourt that she now enters.3 What is more intriguing, I believe, is the way that the biblical or apocryphal Daniel, that young stranger who traditionally then becomes celebrated for his deciphering and judging abilities, is in these three works directly or indirectly invoked if only to be subverted." The young women in Shakespeare and James refuse to be placed in question; they attempt, rather, to alter patterns of genderdefined action, to remake tradition, and to create a fresh interpretive model by taking up the role of Daniel for themselves. It may be that when James added his Preface to The Portrait years after its completion, he chose these specific Shakespeare references to reinforce the The Henry James Review 12 (1991): 212-30 © 1991 by The Johns Hopkins University Press The Role of Daniel in The Portrait of a Lady 213 echoes of a scriptural, judging figure so as to emphasize the complications of interpretation both for Isabel herself and for those who evaluate her.5 The scene James establishes in his preface for "placing his treasure right" introduces his own theories about Isabel's "particular value" in a manner strongly reminiscent of the discussion of Claudio and Benedict concerning a woman as a "jewel" and the "case to put it into" (Li. 188) in the opening moments of Much Ado, or of the beginning of The Merchant when Bassanio talks about Portia, who is, he declares, "nothing undervalue'd" (Li.168). These similarities between James and Shakespeare not only focus upon the problem of what Benedict caUs "my simple true judgment" (Much Ado I.i.173), but also more specifically make room in each instance for an interpretive Daniel, whether drawn from the biblical stories of interpretation and prophecy or from the apocryphal judging Daniel of "Susannah and the Elders."6 For it is possible to argue that the essential plot outline of Much Ado, with its tale of slander in an orchard and its paired accusing men, recaUs Susannah and the Elders, her threat of attack in the garden, and her incrimination thereafter in public court. In Shakespeare's play, too, a woman's fate is determined in garden and court, as "Lady Hero" (Much Ado III.iii.153), falsely placed under suspicion in a scene of eavesdropping in a garden, later faces accusations in the town church when charged with unfaithfulness that may "blot that name [Hero]" (IV.i.81). The...