AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.

"There are plenty of houses": architecture and genre in the Portrait of a Lady.

Studies in the Novel

| December 22, 2005 | Machlan, Elizabeth Boyle | COPYRIGHT 2005 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

"It's not damp, by the way; I've had the house thoroughly examined; it's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't dream of living in it ... there are plenty of houses."

James, Portrait 163

Lord Warburton incorrectly reads Isabel Archer's obvious skepticism about his proposal of marriage as an objection to his home, Lockleigh; at the same time, he innocently clarifies her true rationale for rejecting him. Isabel, newly liberated from her grandmother's house in Albany, has no desire to dwell in a place that is "perfectly safe and right"; she seeks instead to occupy "houses in which things have happened" (163, 81). The heroine of James's 1881 novel associates types of domestic architecture with varieties of experience and knowledge, while at the same time continually comparing her life to literature and displaying a metafictional understanding of the implications of certain narrative forms. This triangulation of architecture, literature, and experience occurs throughout The Portrait of a Lady, raising the question of how we should read the "actual" houses in the text as well as their ghostly metaphorical counterparts. Much has been written about James's use of architectural metaphors and the attention drawn to them by the preface to the New York edition; however, the relationship between houses and literary genres in this novel has not yet been fully explored. (1) In the canon of Portrait criticism, common practice has been to associate each fictional house with an aspect of Isabel's personality or perspective (e.g. Schulman 163). Building upon this critical foundation, but taking into account James's play with literary as well as architectural structures, I propose that each of the houses occupied by Isabel is meant to invoke one or more novelistic genres with which both Isabel as a reader and the "outside" reader of James's text are familiar and about which they hold certain expectations. (2) These expectations, I suggest, manifest themselves in the form as well as the content of the text. If in fact each house suggests a set of possibilities for Isabel, derived from established literary conventions, James creates for her and the reader a literary phenomenology that reveals the centrality of architectural metaphors to human understanding, and the ways in which genre not merely categorizes, but helps interpret, experience.

James's manipulation of genre presumes, even requires, an experienced reader equipped with what Jonathan Culler calls "literary competence" (113). (3) Michael McKeon defines genres as "models for making formal choices within a larger realm of formal determinacy" (1). In other words, literary genres offer both readers and writers examples of choices that have previously been made within given fictional situations. McKeon's understanding of genre is essential to nay reading of James in that it presents genre's taxonomic purposes as inseparable from, instead of at odds with, its hermeneutic functions. While Isabel initially regards genre as an impediment to personal and artistic freedom, what McKeon calls "a grid imposed on writer and reader alike, from without," the novel itself ultimately promotes a more nuanced point of view (3). Genre, I argue, becomes for James--and for Isabel, albeit too late--an "enabling hermeneutic" that fosters intelligibility and helps us use what we know to make sense of our experience. Yet the text's many literal and metaphorical architectures often obscure this intelligibility by evoking and then defamiliarizing established generic conventions: for James, genre sometimes represents only the illusion of creative control. (4) As a result, Portrait consists of not one but several "realm(s) of formal determinacy," with each house an individual "realm" within the overarching "realm" of the novel. James's manipulation of genre within his "house of fiction" seems to suggest that stories--and, perhaps, lives--must be read from several angles, "not one window, but a million," in order to be understood (Portrait 45). How, then, do aesthetic categories such as genre influence our perception of the "real"?

Although the title of the book points to the portrait as a governing metaphor, the coalescence of art and the "real" in James's fictional houses best represents the aesthetic ambiguity around which his text is built. Joel Porte even calls Isabel "the architect of her own portrait," demonstrating architecture's authority over all other tropes in the novel (19). If a portrait implies a framed, immobile image, architecture suggests movement through space, habitation as opposed to enclosure. Houses, unlike portraits, can be seen from all sides, while doors and windows imply interiors that portraits can not provide. A house is also always more than a work of art. While aesthetic conventions allow us to classify different genres of architecture, they tell us nothing about the "character" of a house, its history, or who dwells there. According to Marilyn Chandler, "If a fiction is like a house, so a house is a kind of fiction: a text, a story, a system of signs, a way of organizing relations into comprehensible patterns" (91). While Chandler's analogy suggests that each house/text holds a single fixed meaning, for James, the significance of a house depends primarily on who is looking, and what side of its walls they happen to be on. I propose that by portraying the house of fiction as both an "outlook" and a "mould," James demonstrates the freedoms and constraints that characterize point of view (45). He also seems to anticipate Heidegger's assertion that "the real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell" (109). For Heidegger--and, I would argue, for James--dasein, or situatedness, makes where we are inextricable from who we are. Isabel, who tends to judge a house by its cover, believes that she can wander from place to place and remain unaffected, essentially herself. (5) James, however, plays a phenomenological chicken-and-egg game with Isabel's fate. Will who Isabel is determine where she lives, or will where she lives shape who she becomes?

Ellen Eve Frank characterizes James's interweaving of architecture, plot, and point of view as a complex framing device: "To James, then, 'form' seems to be a shape or 'frame'--it limits and encloses the subject, surrounds the scene, determines the scope--and a position, a distance or angle, a vantage point, what we more often think of as literary or narrative technique" (185). In other words, what we see, both as subjects and as readers, is profoundly influenced by where we stand--or are placed--to see it, as well as by what we think we should be seeing, according to our preconceived expectations. (6) In the real world, specific spaces provide forums for specific events; in fiction, James explores the structural implications of "design" on knowledge and freedom. "'We see our lives from our own point of view,'" Isabel tells Lord Warburton when she rejects his proposal of marriage (172). Later chapters, however, suggest that Isabel wrongly equates vision with independence because all ways of looking are in fact constructed by elements beyond our control. What we see has been shaped without our knowledge, by our own past experience, and even, in Isabel's case, by the contrivance of others. Isabel regards each house she encounters as an opportunity to learn; however, James's structures seem to stand between her and the knowledge she needs.

From the start, it is hard to categorize the narrative habitat in which Isabel dwells. Gardencourt, the house through which she makes her memorable entrance into an English summer day, amalgamates several literary types, all of which fall under the larger rubric of romance: the Gothic, the comedy ...

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and more
Virginia residents have been rebuilding from James River's fury after Isabel.
Newspaper article from: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News September 19, 2004 700+ words
...refrigerator. Oh, and the wall that Hurricane Isabel pushed off its foundation is now back...husband, Bobby Richardson. Hurricane Isabel lashed the 70 or so beachfront houses...Grateful Dead memorabilia disappeared. The James River has been a constant neighbor a few...
Isabel Flick: the many lives of an extraordinary Aboriginal woman.(Book review)
Magazine article from: Australian Aboriginal Studies Herbert, Jeannie March 22, 2005 700+ words
Isabel Flick: the many lives of an extraordinary Aboriginal woman Isabel Flick and Heather Goodall Allen...they are embarking, readers of Isabel's life story will engage in...Indigenous Australian Studies, James Cook University, <Jeannie...
Isabel Healthcare Adds Hospitals in Wisconsin & Minnesota.
Press release article from: PR Newswire July 10, 2008 700+ words
...isabelhealthcare.com/ Contacts: James Harris, Westside Public...Joseph Britto, CEO, Isabel Healthcare joseph.britto...Joseph Britto, CEO of Isabel Healthcare, +1-703...isabelhealthcare.com; or James Harris, +1-310...Public Relations, for Isabel Healthcare Web site...
Isabel Healthcare Launches ROI Calculator; Online Tool Projects Product Savings...
Press release article from: PR Newswire October 3, 2006 700+ words
...emergency room physicians. Isabel was first introduced as a pediatric...isabelhealthcare.com/ Contacts: James Harris, Westside Public Relations...703-448-6488 CONTACT: James Harris of Westside Public Relations...jamesharris@westsidepr.com, for Isabel Healthcare; or Joseph Britto...
Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Select Isabel.
Press release article from: PR Newswire February 22, 2007 700+ words
...isabelhealthcare.com/. Contacts: James Harris, Westside Public Relations...5565 Dr. Joseph Britto, CEO, Isabel Healthcare, joseph@isabelhealthcare...703.787.0380 CONTACT: James Harris of Westside Public Relations...jharris@westsidepr.com, for Isabel Healthcare; or Dr. Joseph...
Isabel's fury likely to miss Charleston.
Newspaper article from: The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC) September 16, 2003 700+ words
...See PDF for staff map showing Isabel and her projected path The center...24 hours, and the effects of Isabel might be felt anywhere within...models and other technology. Isabel's track appears fairly certain...Hurricane Center forecaster James Franklin reported late Monday...
Lowcountry's eyes on Isabel.
Newspaper article from: The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC) September 13, 2003 700+ words
...m. Friday, the center of Isabel was near latitude 21.8 north...Islands. A Category 5 hurricane, Isabel had maximum sustained winds...a manager of the Lowe's on James Island. "People have bought...a few days in case Hurricane Isabel does strike. Just down the...
Isabel outlaws logging permits.
News wire article from: Asia Africa Intelligence Wire June 13, 2005 700+ words
...operate on Isabel. However, the Isabel Provincial Government is appealing...loggers the license to operate on Isabel," Premier James Habu said last week. He said it...landowners and resource owners on Isabel to safe guard their forests against...
Outer Banks Open for Vacationers Eight Months after Hurricane Isabel.
Newspaper article from: Washington Times (Washington, D.C.) May 28, 2004 700+ words
...The bad news was Isabel and the good news is...of Commerce. Robin James, general manger of...every week," Ms. James said. The 50-room...the storm," Ms. James said. For some visitors, Isabel is just an afterthought...
Carle Foundation and Wisconsin Children's Hospitals Select Isabel Healthcare.
Press release article from: PR Newswire January 17, 2007 700+ words
...isabelhealthcare.com/ Contacts: James Harris Westside Public Relations...5565 Dr. Joseph Britto CEO, Isabel Healthcare joseph@isabelhealthcare...703-787-0380 Contact: James Harris of Westside Public Relations...jharris@westsidepr.com, for Isabel Healthcare; Dr. Joseph Britto...
For more facts and information, see all results

Source: HighBeam Research, "There are plenty of houses": architecture and genre in the Portrait...

©2009 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
About us | FAQs | Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions
Other Gale sites: Encyclopedia.com | HighBeam Research | Acquire Content | Books & Authors | Goliath | MovieRetriever | Smart QandA