Dialogue and Characterization in The Portrait of a Lady

DIALOGUE AND CHARACTERIZATION IN THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY Carla L. Peterson* Dialogue is a unique mode of discourse in the novel and an important element in the reader's enjoyment of a story. For, unlike all other narrative modes, dialogue speech suggests that a character is directly expressing his thoughts and feelings to other characters—and to the readers—without the mediation of a narrator. In addition, the direct speech of dialogue is meant to give the impression that a character is talking in his own chosen words; thus, not only what he says but also the manner in which he says it tells much about him. The very way in which a character goes about articulating his thoughts in language should function, then, to enhance the perception of his personality . The development of dialogue seems, however, to have been a slow one in the history of the novel. Indeed, novelists seem generally to have found it easier to let their narrators tell about their characters in their own narrative style rather than let the characters speak for themselves in their own voice.1 Henry James, writing at a time when novelists in America were slowly becoming interested in the general question of colloquial style in fiction,2 repeatedly argued in essays and in the prefaces to his novels that dialogue is indeed a unique mode for recording characters' thoughts with properties all of its own. In the Preface to The Awkward Age James spoke of his efforts to write dialogue which is "really constructive dialogue, dialogue organic and dramatic, speaking for itself, representing and embodying substance and form."3 Such dialogue obviates the necessity of the storyteller's "going behind" to "explain and amplify" his subject matter; it make[s] the presented occasion tell all its story itself (p. 111). Although the dialogued "scene" never stands alone but is always found in conjunction with the "going behind" of the narrator (or the "picture") , it remains the higher of the two "compositional forms," "crowning" the picture which is but its "discriminated preparation" (p. 323). •Carla L. Peterson is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Maryland. She has written on Flaubert and James and is now working on a book on women in the nineteenth-century novel. 14Carla L. Peterson Critics of James' style have generally argued that his novels are written in a "uniform plain style" which tends to break down the distinction between the three originally separate genres and prose styles of narrative, essay, and drama. As Leonard Lutwack has argued, "the essayistic material . . . , the dramatic material, and the narrative . . . have no existence as independent genres and are presented in a prose style that is essentially uniform."4 But within the confines of his uniform plain style James sought for ways to make every one of his dialogued scenes "organic and dramatic, speaking for itself, representing and embodying substance and form." An illustration of the care with which James constructed his scenes may be found in The Portrait of a Lady (1881) in the conversation between Isabel Archer and Gilbert Osmond on the occasion of her first visit to his hilltop house outside of Florence.5 There is seemingly nothing very interesting about this dialogue; indeed, it may come to the reader as something of a disappointment as nothing of great moment is said and a kind of stylistic sameness seems to permeate the speech of both characters. And yet this passage reveals itself to be an excellent example of the complexity of James' presentation of character, as subtle differences in language usage here intimate profound differences in personality and attitudes between the protagonists which emerge explicitly only much later in the novel. What the reader of the novel knows about Isabel Archer up to this point of the narrative is that she is a high-spirited young American woman recently come to Europe and recently come into an inheritance of 70,000 pounds. While the narrator describes her as full of intelligence , imagination, mental acuity, and good taste, he also says that she has a tendency to think a little too well of herself. While she professes a great attachment to...