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Portrait of a Lady quotes
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28
English
Undergraduate 2
12/18/2011

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Cards

Term
Isabel Archer
Definition
___ was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active.
Term
Ralph 
Definition
The priviledge isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it.
Term

Madame Merle 

 

*speaking to Isabel (pg. 175)

Definition
When you've lived as long as I you'll see that every human being has his shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances.
Term

Isabel

 

*speaking to Madame Merle

Definition

I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one.

 

Term

Isabel

 

*speaking to Madame Merle (pg. 175)

Definition
My clothes may express the dressmaker, but they don't express me. To begin with it's not my own choice that I wear them; they're imposed upone me by society.
Term

Isabel thinking about Casper Goodwood

(pg. 104-105)

Definition
It was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of freedom. There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her...It was in no degree a matter of his "advantages"-- it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his clear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window.
Term

Casper Goodwood 

(pg. 106)

Definition
There were intricate, bristling things he rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men-- which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition.
Term
Isabel and the Albany house
Definition
____ of course knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she thought her grandmother's home romantic.
Term

Isabel and the Albany House

 

(Exemplifies Isabel's willful disconnectedness)

 

pg. 33

Definition
The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was properly entered from the second door of the house, the door that had been condemned, and that is was secured by bolts which a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper she might have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the otherside -- a place which became to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or of terror.
Term
Florence Villa
Definition
This antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing form had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, no the face of a house.
Term

Florence Villa 

 

pg. 195

Definition
The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural; but their function seemed less to offer communication with the world than to defy the world to look in.
Term

Ralph arguing with Isabel 

 

(pg. 292)

Definition
Ah, that's wilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in that way-- you were meant for something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!
Term

Isabel defending Osmond while arguing with Ralph

 

(pg. 292)

Definition
He's not important--no, he's not important; he's a man to whom importance is supremely indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call 'small,' then he's as small as you please. I call that large--it's the largest thing I know.
Term

Mrs. Touchett talking to Isabel

 

(pg. 282)

Definition
You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentlemen's having had to be lashed up? You're quite right. They're immense, your attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she hadn't put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he was not a man to take trouble.
Term

Ralph and Isabel discussing her engagement

 

(pg. 288)

Definition

"I think I've hardly got over my surprise," __ went on at last. "You were the last person I expected to see caught."

"I don't know why you call it caught."

"Because you're going to be put into a cage."

"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you," xx answered.

Term

Gilbert Osmond

 

(pg. 258)

Definition
He perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to fiqure in his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand.
Term

Gilbert Osmond

 

(pg. 258)

Definition
He had never forgiven his star for not appointing him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of such conduct as ____'s. It would be proper that the woman he might marry should have done something of that sort.
Term
Gilbert Osmond thinking of Isabel
Definition
What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one's repetitions and reflected one's thought on a polished, elegant surface? ____ hated to see his thought produced literally--that made it look stale and stupid...this lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen none-- a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served dessert.
Term

Gilbert Osmond 

 

(pg. 331)

Definition
Under the guise of caring only for intrinsic values ____ lived exclusively for the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success.
Term

Isabel's strained relationship with Osmond

 

 

Definition
Besides this, her short interview with ___ half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it.
Term

Isabel 

(pg. 356)

Definition
She had taken all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end.
Term
Isabel and Osmond
Definition
There were times when she almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she understood how completely she must have done so if fact. She had effaced  herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small pretending there was less of her than there really was.
Term

Popy after being left in the convent

 

(pg. 462)

Definition
She bowed her pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be merciful.
Term

Ralph talking to Isabel before he dies

 

pg. 477

Definition
There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see others die. That's the sensation of life--the sense that we remain.
Term

Ralph speaking with Isabel before he dies

 

pg. 478

Definition
You wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the convetional!
Term

Isabel's response to Casper Goodwood's attempt to run off with her at the end of the novel

 

pg. 489

Definition
The rest was that she had never been loved before. She had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about, it lifted her off her feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, forced open her set teeth.
Term
Opening lines of Portrait of a Lady
Definition
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as after-noon tea. ...Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime.
Term
Opening discription of the Touchett home
Definition
The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch
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