Framing and Reframing the Ladies: Viewing Attitudes in The Portrait of a Lady and Its Cinematic Counterpart

Striving to leave fidelity-criticism behind, this comparative analysis treats Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady and its cinematic counterpart by Jane Campion as complementary versions of Isabel’s story. The graphic integration of stills functioning as visual evidence emphasizes the dialogic quality of this comparison based on non-essentialist feminist and post-structuralist principles. Mainly focusing on literary and visual strategies employed by both media to represent wo/men on page and screen, this analysis shows how those strategies result in a non-affirmative realism preventing both novel and movie from killing their ‘ladies’ into art.