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Date Posted: 21:44:35 03/20/08 Thu
Author: Cara
Subject: External Mediation in Portrait of a Lady

While I was reading the article on James's book in Contagion, I was surprised to realize something about Isabel: that all her mediators are external. The author of the article only tried to explain this in one situation, stating that Isabel so idealized Madame Merle that she never conceived of equalling her in any way. However, all the other mediators are external as well -- Henrietta, Mrs. Touchett, Gilbert, maybe Ralph -- and she changes mediators frequently and fairly obviously. I couldn't figure out why James would do this. It certainly wasn't out of ignorance, because he clearly understands the mechanisms of external mediation in fine detail. But then I remembered how he introduced Isabel, by having other characters talk about her. Before she even enters the novel, James makes sure to impress upon his readers that Isabel reads all the time, and she's read everything. She grew up mostly sitting alone reading. Thus, her entire life before coming to Europe, and probably her desire to travel as well, has been based on external mediation. She never gives good explanations for her decisions, but merely claims the prerogative to do whatever she wants. But what she wants is never determined by what she wants at all, but by what she thinks her model would want.

So, unless we all want to be slaves to arbitrary external mediation, we should not spend all our time reading.

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