Lies and Deceit Quotes - The Portrait of a Lady | The Portrait of a Lady -Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

"But for me there are only two classes: the people I trust and the people I don't. Of those two, my dear Isabel, you belong to the first." (6.4)

Wise Mr. Touchett knows that the world is divided between honest people and deceivers; Isabel doesn’t yet understand how great this compliment is.

"Yes, that's what you enjoy most; I can't make out what you're up to," said Lord Warburton. "You strike me as having mysterious purposes – vast designs." (9.10)

Even early on, it seems that Isabel is capable of deceit. What Lord Warburton doesn’t see is that her purposes are mysterious even to her.

"It’s very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I’m rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I’ve been shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I’ve been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard – the quiet, dusky cupboard where there’s an odour of stale spices – as much as I can. But when I’ve to come out and into a strong light – then, my dear, I’m a horror!" (19.6)

Madame Merle admits that she’s been around the block a few times, and that she’s emerged from her troubles battered, but not broken. She hides her flaws well, but we’re nervous about what might be hiding beneath her mended surface. We begin to wonder what she’s really like.

The house had a front upon a little grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the hill-top; and this front, pierced with a few windows in irregular relations and furnished with a stone bench lengthily adjusted to the base of the structure and useful as a lounging-place to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who confidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude – this antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way – looked off behind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light. (22.1)

Osmond’s house, like its owner, is deceptive and masked; it warns us about what awaits within.

"You're unfathomable," she murmured at last. "I'm frightened at the abyss into which I shall have cast her." (26.63)

Madame Merle realizes that she has started a game but lost control of it – Osmond is far more deceitful than she is.

"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your engagement."

"She couldn't have prevented it."

"She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I knew she could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I didn't understand that she would play two at the same time." (33.4)

Mrs. Touchett actually admired Madame Merle for her ability to deceive and play roles before, but, now that she’s proven to be a double agent, the older woman is appalled. Apparently, some small measure of deceit is appreciated in this society, but too much is unwelcome.

He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole. (42.2)

Isabel realizes that Osmond wasn’t as deceptive as he could have been – he only showed her select parts of his personality, and she believed it to be everything. She did the same thing to him… they actually deceived each other into falling in love.

She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation. Osmond’s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Osmond’s beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. (42.5)

Though Osmond is perfectly civil on the outside, his self-centered, self-glorifying mental presence lurks on the inside. This is what emerged after their marriage, and it controls Isabel now.

"Well," said Caspar Goodwood simply, "she thinks I'm watching her."

"Watching her?"

"Trying to make out if she's happy."

"That's easy to make out," said Ralph. "She's the most visibly happy woman I know."

"Exactly so; I'm satisfied," Goodwood answered dryly. For all his dryness, however, he had more to say. "I've been watching her; I was an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to see for myself what it amounts to. I've seen," he continued with a harsh ring in his voice, "and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite ready to go." (48.5)

Isabel herself has become something of a master deceiver in the years since her marriage, and she actively tries to fool both Caspar and Ralph into thinking that she is more than "visibly happy."

Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was not was the most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. "Who are you – what are you?" Isabel murmured. "What have you to do with my husband?" It was strange that for a moment she drew as near to him as if she had loved him. 

"Ah then, you take it heroically! I’m very sorry. Don’t think, however, that I shall do so." 

"What have you to do with me?" Isabel went on. 

"Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes from Isabel’s face. "Everything!" she answered. 

Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman’s eyes seemed only a darkness. "Oh misery!" she murmured at last; and she feel back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right, Madame Merle had married her. (49.9-11)

With a single, terrible word ("Everything!"), Madame Merle lets Isabel know that she has been in control all along. No further explanation is needed – the knowledge that Isabel has been deceived is enough for her.

She asked herself, with an almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate friend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best of her belief she had no personal acquaintance with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with some success, this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it was not wicked – in the historic sense – to be even deeply false; for that was what Madame Merle had been – deeply, deeply, deeply. (49.13)

Madame Merle’s terrible deception shocks Isabel – she has never known anything like it in her life before, and can only compare it to the theoretical extreme of "wickedness" seen in the Bible.