Portraying the Lady - Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James

Portraying the Lady brings to light the experimental quality and inherent consistency of stories that have received little critical attention, all of which revolve around ideas at the core of the cultural representation of femininity at the time. Izzo shows how James, by testing and stretching these ideas in his imagery and plots, exposed and exploded the perverse logic and the ultimate implications of such culturally shared versions of femininity, thus revealing their oppressive quality for women and laying bare literature's complicity in reproducing and circulating them. Exposing James's texts as sensitive registers of women's roles during the Victorian-Edwardian era, this book demonstrates that his texts make readers aware of how those stereotypes operated.
 
Blending literary, art, and feminist criticism with narratological analysis and postmodern theory, this groundbreaking work restores a formal awareness to James studies within the wider theoretical concerns of feminist, gender, and cultural critiques.