The Portrait of a Lady

     I’ve recently emerged from the 19th century. Again. These days it seems like I spend most of my time there, walking through the pages of the past with characters, who “lived” over a hundred years ago. Perhaps it is because I am a woman, but I absolutely love the Victorian novel, particularly the late Victorian novel. There is something about the disillusionment of romantic idealism that intrigues me.  No longer do the characters marry and live happily ever after. Often, as in Portrait of a Lady, marriage marks the end of happiness.
     Isabel Archer is a young, feisty, free-minded woman eager to explore the world and experience all it has to offer. From the beginning of the novel, she was an exciting character to follow. That is until she meets Gilbert Osmond, an American in Italy, who has done absolutely nothing with himself except paint watercolors and collect pretty things. Gilbert Osmond describes himself as a “conventional” man. Immediately the warning bells went off in my head, but apparently not for Isabel Archer, who is charmed by him.
     They wed. And it is downhill from there. I do not think I have ever encountered a character as thoroughly terrifying as Gilbert Osmond. He is not physically abusive; rather, his cruelty is much more insidious. He is emotionally manipulative and controlling. He seeks to break Isabel’s freedom of mind and temper. She is just another pretty thing he has collected.
     Yet, Isabel is hesitant to leave him. She is afraid of herself. And I wondered: how many of us remain in unhealthy situations, whether a relationship, work, or even a lifestyle, because we are too afraid of what leaving would mean? It seems that we become accustomed to our pain, as if it is the only thing we have left, and we would not know what to do with ourselves without it.
          -Ariella Shapiro