The Portrait of a Lady

The niece, Isabel Archer, arrives. She enters informally and immediately picks up Ralph’s small dog, speaking to it affectionately. Her chaperone, Mrs. Touchett, has already retired to her room without greeting her husband. Via Isabel, Mrs. Touchett tells Ralph to come see her at a designated time. Isabel charms each of the men present with her conversation and confident manner.

The narrator characterizes Mrs. Touchett as an odd and independent woman, who is in effect separated from her husband and lives primarily in Florence. Her feud with Isabel’s father had begun when she criticized his parenting after her sister’s death. Mrs. Touchett remembers traveling to Albany to see her nieces after their father’s death. Isabel has great affection for the house, which belonged to her late grandmother, and enjoys reading and solitude there. Arriving at the house when Isabel is home alone reading, Mrs. Touchett takes a liking to her niece during their first meeting, and she offers to take her to Europe.

Isabel’s oldest sister, Lilian Ludlow, prepares to return Mrs. Touchett’s visit. In conversation with her husband, Edmund, and Isabel, Lilian expresses a hope that the older woman will take an interest in Isabel: take her abroad and give her “all the advantages” (44). Isabel reflects on her upbringing. While others, including people to whom her father owed money, had a negative view of his generosity and lack of judgment, she considered it a “great felicity to be his daughter” (46). She appreciated her liberal education and the opportunity to travel, which incited a desire to see more of the world.

A visitor, Caspar Goodwood, arrives to see Isabel. She respects him more than most men, and it is generally supposed that he wants to marry her. While their visit is not detailed, the narrator notes that he leaves defeated but still resolute.

Ralph reflects on his education at Harvard and Oxford, after which he feels that he finally became “English enough.” He traveled, then took a position in his father’s bank, but had to leave due to his poor health.

Ralph asks his mother what she intends to do with Isabel. She answers that she’ll take her niece to Paris and Florence. He asks for more details about their plans and his cousin, but she tells him that he’ll need to find out about Isabel for himself. Ralph and Isabel talk after the others have gone to bed; he finds her unique, intelligent, and attractive.

Isabel reflects on her own character. She is intelligent, confident but afraid to fail, and hopeful but critical of others’ wrongdoings. She thinks also about how much she values independence, reflecting on Henrietta Stackpole, a woman journalist of her acquaintance, as an example. She finds England to be a “revelation” and is “as diverted as a child at a pantomime” (66). She spends time talking with Mr. Touchett, who likes and trusts her. The two discuss what English people are like. While Isabel worries that they won’t like her because she is unconventional, he says they are inconsistent and that they will.

Isabel discusses England in comparison to America with Mrs. Touchett, then with Ralph. She defends America to accommodate Ralph’s assumptions about her, but she is really enamored with England. She accuses Ralph of apathy, and they continue to enjoy banter. He wonders whether he is in love with Isabel, but he decides “that on the whole he was not” (74), though he definitely admires her.

Lord Warburton visits. Mrs. Touchett interrupts Isabel’s evening conversation with him and Ralph rather than leaving them unchaperoned. Isabel is surprised and annoyed, but ultimately tells her aunt she is glad to have been told about social expectations she hadn’t known about.