헨리 제임스의 『여인의 초상』에 대한 기독교적 해석: 미국독자와 서술의 틈 사이의 역학관계에 주목하여

Abstract

Isabel is analyzed in this paper as an American Eve to whom the forbidden apple is Europe, the old world of high culture. True to her self-indulgent nature, she chooses the forbidden apple, but even after she realizes the fatal error of her choice, she should still go for it for that is the way it should be. Whether the novel is viewed in terms of the psychological realism of a woman or of a human being as a collective entity or in terms of a parable indicating the natural direction the ‘young’ American civilization should take in the future, Isabel’s choice of Rome or Osmond over America or Goodwood is inevitable, this paper argues. The uncomfortable relationship between James and the American public occasioned by the latter’s outbursts of chauvinism against James’s Hawthorne, which was published right before the writing of the novel under consideration, is adduced as one good reason for the kind of depiction James has given to the character of Goodwood and for his repeated rejection by the heroine. James’s uncomfortable feelings towards the American public of the time is also taken to be responsible for such notable textual fissures as the ecliptic ending as well as the suppression of the first three years of Isabel’s married life. By way of drawing upon the biblical myth of Eve and her initiation into experience for portraying his heroine and her experiences in the novel, James chooses to present the story of Isabel and her experiences not only as an individual case of a woman but also as the universal case implying both a more mature future of America and the archetypal psychic pattern of Everyman. The Christian culture James found himself in, especially his “father’s ideas” concerning the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis and a more mature future of America have been traced down as the ultimate contributors for James’s conceptualizaion, if not his beautiful rendering, of the “fat and grand” subject of the novel.