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Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Key Examples in The Portrait of a Lady
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as a Book:
In a conversation between Isabel’s sister Lilian and her husband Edmund in a flashback to the United States, Edmund metaphorically compares Isabel to a book:
“Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her,” Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer in an extremely audible tone. “I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground. I don’t see what you’ve against her except that she’s so original.” “Well, I don’t like originals; I like translations,” Mr Ludlow had more than once replied. “Isabel’s written in a foreign tongue. I can’t make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a Portuguese.”
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Ralph's Architecture:
Near the beginning of the novel, Ralph and Isabel discuss the fact that Ralph acts lighthearted at all times. Ralph explains that this is an intentional choice he makes, using an architectural metaphor in the process:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I keep a band of music in my ante-room,” he said once to her. “It has orders to play without stopping; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think that dancing’s going on within.” It was dance-music indeed that you usually heard when you came within ear-shot of Ralph’s band; the liveliest waltzes seemed to float upon the air. Isabel often found herself irritated by this perpetual fiddling; she would have liked to pass through the ante-room, as her cousin called it, and enter the private apartments.
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Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as a House:
When Ralph is first getting to know Isabel, he reflects on her character, metaphorically comparing her to a house in the process:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself?
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Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as Not a Sheep:
In a conversation between Isabel and her American suitor Goodwood (who has come to Europe to encourage her to return home and marry him), Isabel uses a metaphor to communicate her desire for freedom:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I’m not in my first youth—I can do what I choose—I belong quite to the independent class. I’ve neither father nor mother; I’m poor and of a serious disposition; I’m not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and conventional; indeed I can’t afford such luxuries. Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. I don’t wish to be a mere sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me.”
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Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as a Boat:
At two different points in the novel, Ralph uses a metaphor to compare Isabel to a boat. In the following passage from Chapter 18, Ralph uses one of these metaphors to explain to his father Mr. Touchett why he wants his father to leave Isabel a large sum of money:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I should like to put a little wind in her sails.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I should like to put it into her power to do some of the things she wants. She wants to see the world for instance. I should like to put money in her purse.”
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Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—Parasites:
In a conversation with Isabel early in their relationship, Madame Merle metaphorically compares both American expatriates and women to parasites:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“You should live in your own land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we’re not good Americans we’re certainly poor Europeans; we’ve no natural place here. We’re mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven’t our feet in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl.”
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Explanation and Analysis—Madame Merle the Iron Pot:
In a conversation between Isabel and Madame Merle (before Isabel learns about Madame Merle’s secret past affair with Osmond), Madame Merle describes herself using an extended metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“It’s very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I’m rather stout, but [...] I’ve been shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I’ve been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard—the quiet, dusky cupboard where there’s an odour of stale spices—as much as I can. But when I’ve to come out and into a strong light—then, my dear, I’m a horror!”
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Chapter 26
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as a Boat:
At two different points in the novel, Ralph uses a metaphor to compare Isabel to a boat. In the following passage from Chapter 18, Ralph uses one of these metaphors to explain to his father Mr. Touchett why he wants his father to leave Isabel a large sum of money:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I should like to put a little wind in her sails.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I should like to put it into her power to do some of the things she wants. She wants to see the world for instance. I should like to put money in her purse.”
Related Themes:
Chapter 28
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as a Work of Art:
Throughout the novel, various characters—as well as the author himself—metaphorically compare Isabel to a work of art. The title, after all, is The Portrait of a Lady—James’s way of making it explicit that the novel is meant to be a work of art in which Isabel is the primary focus.
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Chapter 35
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel as a Silver Plate:
After Osmond secures Isabel’s hand in marriage, the narrator shares some of Osmond’s condescending views of Isabel, using a metaphor in the process:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this lady’s intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one—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. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring.
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Chapter 36
Explanation and Analysis—The Palace as a Fortress:
When sharing Rosier’s views of Osmond’s palace in Rome, the narrator uses a metaphor to compare the house to a dungeon, as seen in the following passage:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The object of Mr. Rosier’s well-regulated affection dwelt in a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure overlooking a sunny piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. In a palace, too, little Pansy lived—a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon to poor Rosier’s apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious father he doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in a kind of domestic fortress.
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Chapter 42
Explanation and Analysis—Isabel’s Mind as a Garden:
After marrying Osmond and realizing his true cruel and manipulative nature, Isabel reflects on his desire to simultaneously control her and show her off, using a metaphor in the process:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his—attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already far-reaching.
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Chapter 52
Explanation and Analysis—Madame Merle’s Shock:
When Madame Merle sees Isabel and realizes that Isabel knows her secret—that she and Osmond had an affair many years ago that resulted in the birth of their daughter, Pansy—the narrator captures her shock using a pair of watery metaphors:
Unlock with LitCharts A+This discovery was tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most accomplished of women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that moment. Then the conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed on as smoothly as might be to the end […] But the startled quality of her voice refused to improve—she couldn’t help it—while she heard herself say she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
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