A MONISTIC VIEW OF JAMES’ CONFIDANTES
A MONISTIC VIEW OF JAMES’ CONFIDANTES

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at analyzing the roles of the confidantes in James’ “The Portrait of a Lady”. The novel is remarkable, among many merits, for including the indirect juxtaposition of the two confidantes, of two female friends Isabel has. The contrast between Henrietta Stackpole and Madame Merle, alluded to in the author’s Preface, is more dramatic than he distinctions made between Mrs. Prest and Miss Tina Bordereau in “The Aspern Papers”.In receiving fuller treatment, the confidantes in “The Portrait” are differentiated not only in their technical use but also in their moral and cultural backgrounds. We have attemped to highlight in the present paper the great difference between the two confidantes which originates in their diverse purpose in the author’s plan. Henrietta, who figures largely in the first part of the novel, which takes place in England and Paris, is used by James to analyze Isabel verbally and to be the first of her friends to predict her disaster whereas James’s purpose for Madame Merle is to implement his heroine’s downfall through the subtlety of her betrayal.

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