Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (BOLLI)

LIT10-10-Tue2

Diane Proctor

This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email.

September 10 - November 12

If you have never read Henry James’ remarkable novel, Portrait of a Lady, then encountering this author’s exquisite wit and exploration of “an imaginative life” proves fascinating. Even if you have read it, each exposure invites fresh perspectives. James based Isabel Archer, his protagonist, on a beloved cousin—Minny Temple—whose loss was very painful to him, and in many ways, he uses the novel to imagine what Minny’s life might have been like had she—a “highly intelligent, highly strung, idealistic, sharp-tongued, restless, passionately impulsive young woman”—ever lived to travel to Europe or grown to encounter the complex challenges of adulthood. Thus, in many aspects, this is a “coming of age” novel. According to Philip Horne, the prominent James critic, this work also reflects, “a dialogue between Victorian certainties and modernist doubts.” It is, thereby, a discourse between American innocence and European cynicism.

More facilitated discussion than lecture.

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Penguin Classics ISBN 978014144126-9.

We will be reading the original British version rather than the subsequent American version for which James rewrote the ending. The book can be purchased at Target, Bookshop.org, Abe Books and Better World Books.

2 hours/week. 

Diane Proctor has dedicated her career to the teaching of literature and writing and she was on the faculty of Milton Academy, The Hotchkiss School, and Middlesex School. In retirement, she has served as the President of the League of Voters of Concord-Carlisle and leads courses at several learning and retirement programs. She has taught at BOLLI for eight years.