Isabel and Pansy: The Ironic Tales of Fate in The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James

During the late 19th and early 20th century a proclaimed “gender crisis” had availed itself unto American culture through the recently present ideal of an economically independent woman.  Due to a variety of social forces and awareness this “new woman” attempted to reinvent the economic and social status of females at the turn of the century.   Many American novels at this time attempted to reflect this new gender phenomenon within its pages by exploring the possibilities and fate of a woman supposedly set free from societal constraints through independent wealth or income.  An example of one such novel includes The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James.  This novel contends with the ideals of the “new woman” through the use of several of his female characters, exemplifying the extremes of both the “new woman” and her counterpart.  James’s novel, however, refuses to place him in the position of either staunch critic or open supporter of the ideals of the emerging independence of women. Instead he deconstructs the “new woman” paradigm, Isabel Archer,  into a complex web of irony by pairing this economically independent woman with her economic and societal opposite, Pansy.  It is in the relationship of these two women that James is able to truly unravel the irony of the fate of Isabel Archer.