A Portrait of the Novel: James, Flaubert, and the Quest for Literary Autonomy

Abstract

Abstract:Taking Pierre Bourdieu's interpretation of Flaubert's Sentimental Education as a model, this article reads The Portrait of a Lady as a representation of the international literary field in which Henry James sought to achieve a position in the 1870s and 1880s. James's prise de position is enacted in the marriage plot and is centered around his rejection of the highly autonomous but immoral French novel of Flaubert and his school. The subject matter of Portrait is then James's quest for the literary autonomy of the English novel, which Isabel Archer ideally embodies.