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Sloughing off the burdens: Ada's and Isabel's parallel/antithetical quests for self-actualization in Jane Campion's film The Piano and Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady

Literature Film Quarterly, 1997 by Jeanne R Dapkus

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In James's Portrait, Isabel has earned a wide variety of interpretations. Many critics have seen her as a tragic figure, failing in her self-proclaimed quest for freedom and experience. They say Isabel has a "sober, almost dispassionate acceptance of life's limitations" (Ventura 37). She has a "fundamental timidity towards life and fear of self-assertion despite her many pronouncements to the contrary" (Peterson 21). Her final and inescapable destiny is "the prison of womanhood" (Sabiston 339).

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However, plenty of critics have also recognized the triumph of Isabel's character, especially in regards to her emergence as a self-actualized person within a context which makes it very difficult for a woman to become so. Like Ada, these critics see Isabel as searching for her freedom and maintaining her ability to choose her fate. Isabel is "independent, selfwilled, freedom loving" (Wiseman 463). "Like America, she is ardently engaged in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." She is "consciously and deliberately self-creating," "fanatic in her quest for freedom" (McMaster 50, 57). She is "a young woman affronting her destiny" (Sangari 714). In Isabel, "James found a literary solution which created possibilities of freedom for himself as an artist, as well as possibilities for the women he admired" (Niemtzow 393). The interpretations which regard Isabel as a character who somehow triumphs in spite of the obstacles in her way are interesting to the discussion in this paper because they support the thesis that includes the assumption that Isabel succeeds as a woman searching for her true self. There is yet another interesting element to Isabel which is at the very core of why her decisions represent a "freedom" rather than a "prison." This element has to do with Isabel's unreleased, sexual self. The notion is certainly not new. Critics have often interpreted Isabel's meetings with male characters other than her husband, Osmond, as illustrations of her fear of her sexual desire (Hochenauer, Vopat, Niemtzow, Sangari). In fact, these critics argue that Isabel's struggle is one which involves her own "secret self ' and the demands of the society in which she lives. They feel that Isabel cannot afford to give in to her hidden passions because, not only would it mean that she would sacrifice all of the luxuries society reserves for the "morally correct" woman, it would also mean that she would somehow lose control over herself-something she fears more than anything else. "There is tension between the passionate Isabel and the inhibited Isabel.... Isabel's divided sexuality, then, becomes the point not the problem" (Hochenauer 19-20). "Because she feels her sexuality so strongly, she feels in danger of falling" (Niemtzow 386). And, "the maintenance of her individual identity and what it represents hinges on the rejection of the men who define her too tightly, whether in terms of status or sexuality" (Sangari 723). "Isabel Archer is terrified of passion. . . once to begin feeling is to risk being unable to stop, to court either passion or irrationality, both of which signal the death of the self' (Vopat 43). Clearly, these critics see Isabel's sexuality as a burden to her, and so it certainly would have been historically. Nancy F. Cott's piece on Victorian sexual ideology points out the following:

Sloughing off the burdens: Ada's and Isabel's parallel/antithetical quests for self-actualization in Jane Campion's film The Piano and Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady

Literature Film Quarterly, 1997 by Jeanne R Dapkus

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