The Portrait of a Lady:An American Classic Revisited

Henry James in his preface to his novel The Portrait of a Lady says that “the house of fiction has in short not one window but a million” (p.xxxii). Therefore, a variety of readings of the text is possible. At the outset, it may be stated that the novel under discussion belongs to the first phase of James’s career. He deals with international theme while he experimented with different types of themes in the second phase. In the third phase he again touched international themes. Here his insight into psychology is deep and profound. In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James has anticipated his psychological interest in character.