A (Post)Secular Portrait

Abstract

Abstract:This essay argues that James’s The Portrait of a Lady calls attention to the dynamic nature of belief in the modern age. While scholars of James’s late phase have begun to question the muddiness surrounding religion, analyses of his early work tend to focus on religion’s clear absence or presence. Such readings overlook the tenuous relationship between spiritual fragility and possibility that marks early novels such as Portrait. Isabel’s journey through spiritual enchantment and disillusionment reveals a dynamic yet unstable (post)secular state marked less by progress toward religious absence or wholeness than by driving questions about the possibilities of belief.