The Portrait of a Lady
James's most architecturally ambitious novel and the one that secured his reputation.
“Don't try to be other than you are. Try only to be the very best of that.”
Why It Matters
James's most architecturally ambitious novel and the one that secured his reputation. Isabel Archer is one of the great heroines of nineteenth-century fiction — and her inexplicable return to Osmond is the question that has haunted readers for over a century. The novel established the modern psychological portrait as a literary form.
The 
Take
Personal reviewTook me a while to get into it, but by the second half, I could not get enough of the keen insights into moment to moment psychology and put-on appearances. Very subtle slow build, but ultimately rewarding if one cares more about the actual writing sentence to sentence instead of an overall plot
Notable Quotes
“She had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action.”
“I shall never make anything of my life. I shall live and die a poor stick.”