“운명”에 맞서다: 『여인의 초상』의 서사와 젠더 수행

Abstract

This study of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady focuses on the first person narrator’s construction of and by the narrative, analyzing how James’s deployment of the narrator’s textual presence refers to, and rewrites, the heterosexual contract and conventions of gender hierarchy implicit in narrative acts and forms. The narrator “I” deserves particular attention, because, while the narrator is widely assumed to be the author’s persona and therefore a ‘man,’ it is not a simple matter to determine the unspecified gender of this unnamed discursive being whose existence is embodied only textually. As a textual construction, the narrator’s gender is constituted through narratorial acts. The ostensible gender identity of the narrator initially has much to do with the Realist narrator’s discursive self-positioning as an omnicient being, whose comprehensive gaze penetrates and contains a young female protagonist. On the other hand, the narrator’s maneuvering of the heteronormative plot of marriage is also a means through which his putative gender position is performed. On both levels the narrator begins by occupying the masculine position of authority. But the narrator’s masculine position becomes increasingly questionable and fluid, as the narrative unfolds in ways that disrupt the marriage plot’s heteronormative performance and Realism’s phallocentric premises. The famous open ending of The Portrait of a Lady is an aesthetic form that finally denotes the narrator’s eventual relinquishment of phallic authority. With Isabel ‘affronting her destiny’ and forever suspended outside the narrator’s control, the narrative form also veers away from Realism’s purview as well as conventions of the marriage plot.