The Ethics of Reading: The Struggle for Subjectivity in The Portrait of a Lady
2002; Wayne State University Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/crt.2002.0018
ISSN1536-0342
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis
ResumoWhen she tells a shocked Henrietta Stackpole that her husband cannot read, the Countess Gemini becomes an almost comic instance of what by this point has become a recurrent pattern in James's The Portrait of a Lady: women figured in terms of written language, but bound to men unable—or unwilling—to "read" them. James offers several playful examples of this trope: Lydia Touchett, whose husband finds her telegrams inscrutable; Lilian Ludlow, whom Edmund Ludlow deliberately misunderstands in order to be funny; and the appropriately named Lady Pensil, who writes, though her brother, Mr. Bantling, seldom reads her works, claiming "I don't go in much for poetry." 1 However, James's figural language also marks the novel's central concern: Gilbert Osmond's villainy, constituted in part through his refusal to read Isabel.
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