From what Henry James writes in the well-known passage on the novelist's ‘need of the individual vision’ (Preface to The Portrait of a Lady), one is surprised to find him attributing absolute objectivity to the central character in another of his novels. A valid subject, he had said, is the result of some direct impression or perception of life; it springs out of the soil of the artist's prime sensibility. To represent adequately what he felt mattered about Isabel Archer, James had decided to place ‘the centre of the subject in the young woman's own consciousness’. He had rejected the easy evasive trick of giving only the general sense of her effect upon the characters surrounding her. To make theirs the predominant point of view would have been an escape from any close account of the subject. What then induced James on a later occasion to reverse this procedure without scruple? One can look first at James's account of the effect which this novel was to produce.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.