Movie Essays - Jane Campions Film of Henry Jamess The Portrait of a L

Jane lychniss Film Version of hydrogen crowd togethers The Portrait of a Lady Jane Campions film version of Henry Jamess novel, The Portrait of a Lady, offers the witness a sexually charged narrative of a young naive American girl in Victorian era Europe. Jamess novel focuses on what an evoke inward life may do for the person leading it even while it a persons life remains perfectly normal (James 54). James could not or would not place into his narrative the sexual thoughts, suggestions, and actions of his characters beyond the first flush of the experience. For example, when Caspar takes Isabel into his arms and kisses her near the close of the novel, Isabel does express sexuality, only that sexuality is short lived He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she felt his arms about her and his lips on her lips. His kiss was like white lightening, a flash that open, and spread again, and stayed and it was extraordinary as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, warrant of its intense identity and made one with this act of possession. (James 636) This passage, like every other passage in the novel, that deals with male-female touching or kissing ends as it is read. James does not allow his characters to recall their sexuality. Dorothea Krook points out To speak of Jamess treatment of the sexual theme in The Portrait of a Lady would be virtually meaningless, but for the striking episode between Isabel and Caspar Goodwood in the very last pages of the book (Krook 101). The sexual theme in Campions film version of Jamess novel is not meaningless. Campion not only allow... .... 1881. New York Penguin, 1986.Jones, Laura, adapt. The Portrait of a Lady. By Henry James. Dir. Jane Campion. Videocassette. PolyGram, 1997.Nadel, Alan. The Search for Cinematic Identity and a Good Man Jane Campions Appropriation of Jamess Portrait. Hen ry James Review 18.2 (1997) 180-183.Volpe, Edmond L. Jamess Theory of Sex. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Portrait of a Lady A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Peter Buitenhuis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1968.Walton, Priscilla L. Jane and James Go to the Movies Post Colonial Portraits of a Lady. Henry James Review 18.2 (1997) 187-190.Wexman, Virginia Wright. The Portrait of a Body. Henry James Review 18.2 (1997) 184-186. White, Robert. Love, Marriage, and Divorce The Matter of Sexuality in The Portrait of a Lady. Henry James Review 7.2-3 (1986) 59-71.