Portrait of a Lady ending
Vance Maverick
In article <32E55D...@nothinbut.net> Bruce Hegel <bru...@nothinbut.net> writes:
> I just finished Henry James' book The Portrait of a Lady and here is a
> real stupid question - how does it end? It says Goodwood goes to Miss
> Stackpole's house and knocks on the door - Miss Stackpole says Isabel
> was supposed to go back to Italy on the train, and then she says -
> supposed to - and then he looks up at her. Was "Her" supposed to be
> Miss Stackpole or Isabel?????
Here's the text (from gopher://gopher.vt.edu:10010/02/105/1):
Again Miss Stackpole held him-with an intention of perfect
kindness-in suspense. "She came here yesterday, and spent the night.
But this morning she started for Rome."
Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on
the doorstep. "Oh, she started-?" he stammered. And without
finishing his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But
he couldn't otherwise move.
Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put
out her hand and grasped his arm. "Look here, Mr. Goodwood," she said;
"just you wait!"
On which he looked up at her-but only to guess, from her face,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood
shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot,
thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if
she had given him now the key to patience.
If the phrase you're confused about is the one I've underlined, it's
Henrietta Stackpole he's looking at. (Pretty clear, I think -- Isabel
is on another continent, and HS has just told him "Look here".)
There's nothing about "supposed".
But that's not the real question of how the book ends. What does
Isabel intend to do in Rome -- and is HS really offering the "cheap
comfort" Goodwood thinks she is, or does she expect Isabel to do
something to justify the wait?
Vance (somebody's gotta do it)
Bruce Hegel
David Christopher Swanson
In article <x6uenfe...@deodar.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Vance Maverick <mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
> But that's not the real question of how the book ends. What does
> Isabel intend to do in Rome
It occurs to me, and I do not swear to this interpretation, that Isabel
is going to the Ponte degli Angeli to look at the African salesmen.
The Ponte degli Angeli (Bridge of Angels) is part of the Roman sidewalk
extended over the deep-sunken Tiber. Some well-intended pedants call
it the Ponte Sant'Angelo, because on the trasteverean side sits the
Castel Sant'Angelo with its single Angel on top. The two railings
which constitute the bridge are topped by twelve statues, two saints
and ten angels, all by Bernini and/or his helpers, twelve of the most
beautiful sculptures on this planet of ours. On the pavement beneath
each angel sits a black man on a carpet selling sunglasses from limbo,
the limbo of the government that has decided to remain uncertain as to
whether or not the salesmen are legal - not legal in selling, legal in
being in Italy. But it's a beautiful merrideonal Dantean limbo on
Bernini's bridge of sighs. Can someone imagine a more pleasant
profession? At dusk it has the flavor of kissing a girl behind a wall
at a party on a Brooklyn rooftop. Except that you cannot kiss the
angels. There are too many centuries of strollers and saunterers - a'
la Sainte Terre - observing you. Isabel doesn't even look at the
angels except to wonder whether, in their place, she could judge the
look of her new sunglasses in the Tiber.
DCS
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~dcs2e
"If Dr. King were alive, things wouldn't be this way." Little girl
quoted in the Washington Post.