The Portrait of a Lady is one of several long and slowly digested books that I have been reading recently (still working on the other two). I found it a remarkable book. Henry James has taken the traditional high-society romance, and recast it quite substantially into a story centred on his heroine Isabel, her early loves and her disastrous marriage, with no happy ending promised. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes – we completely miss the first years after Isabel’s marriage in which she bears and loses a child, and the astute reader will spot the truth about Madame Merle long before Isabel does. But James is also writing about the artistic experience of Americans encountering Europe – Isabel and many of the other characters are American, but only one chapter is set across the Atlantic, the rest being mainly in England and Italy – and also for the effect of art on the soul – not always positive; one of the many unattractive aspects of Isabel’s husband is that he is more interested in antiquity than in her. There are a lot of memorable characters including the courageous Isabel herself, and not all of them are quite what they seem. I think it was F.R. Leavis’ The Great Tradition that put me onto this one, and I am very glad that it did.
From the Heart of Europe
Books, politics, languages and life
George Eliot’s Romola is a tour-de-force of literary research: the author convincingly recreates the Florence of Savonarola through massive accretion of detail (the opening sentences to Adam Bede would be even more appropriate here: “With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader”), However, the love-triangle plot never quite lives up to the historical fireworks.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Sylvia’s Lovers contains a fascinating reconstruction of life in and around Whitby (under the very light disguise of “Monkshaven”) around the turn of the 19th century. The plot builds character intricately and slowly to set up a series of intertwined personal tragedies. (But my wife and I have a long-standing disagreement as to which of the characters bears most of the moral blame!) Like several of Gaskell’s novels, it has a slightly rushed ending.
Jack London’s The Star Rover is bizarre. There’s a framing story (an exposé of torture in California’s prison system), and a series of visions experienced by the narrator: some are more interesting than others but they never quite build up to any kind of thematic whole. But you might find it worth reading as an example of proto-science fiction.