The Southern Review, March 22nd, 2001
I. The Envelope of Circumstances
TWO HUNDRED PAGES INTO The Portrait of a Lady, Madame Merle carries on an instructive conversation with Isabel Archer about marriage prospects. Madame Merle, very much a woman of the world, feels sure that there is an "inevitable young man" with a mustache in Isabel's past, but knows that he doesn't really count, whether he has a castle in the Apennines or an ugly brick house on 40th Street.
"I don't care anything about his house," Isabel responds, eliciting from Madame Merle a lecture born of experience.
"When you have lived as long as I, you will see tha...
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