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

One of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and-thirty, with a face as English as that of the old gentleman I have just sketched was something else; a noticeably handsome face, fresh-coloured, fair and frank, with firm, straight features, a lively grey eye and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. This person had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look – the air of a happy temperament fertilized by a high civilization – which would have made almost any observer envy him at a venture. (1.4)

Lord Warburton is the vision of ideal English manhood, whose privilege as an upper-class member of an upper-class Empire is enviable.

"He’s a very good nurse, Lord Warburton."

"Isn’t he a bit clumsy?" asked his lordship. 

"Oh no, he’s not clumsy – considering that he’s an invalid himself. He’s a very good nurse – for a sick-nurse. I call him my sick-nurse because he’s sick himself."

"Oh, come, daddy!" the ugly young man exclaimed. 

"Well, you are; I wish you weren’t. But I suppose you can’t help it." (1.8)

Ralph is portrayed as a somewhat feminized character. He plays a role that is traditionally female, that of the nurse, and his use of the word "daddy" also makes him seem child-like and weak.

Even philosophers have their preferences, and it must be admitted that of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filial dependence. His father, as he had often said to himself, was the more motherly; his mother, on the other hand, was paternal, and even, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial. (5.1)

In the Touchett household, gender roles are interestingly reversed; Mr. Touchett, in his retirement, has taken on the role of the stay-at-home-mom, while Mrs. Touchett is brusque, busy, and more fatherly.

"For me, in his place, I could be as solemn as a statue of Buddha. He occupies a position that appeals to my imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, great consideration, great wealth, great power, a natural share in the public affairs of a great country. But he's all in a muddle about himself, his position, his power, and indeed about everything in the world. He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful Philistine; he says I don't understand my time. I understand it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as an institution." (8.2)

The great privilege we immediately see in Lord Warburton is apparently too great for comfort – he lives in a time in which men of his class, rank, and talents are being put to question by their own consciences.

Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this – the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgment of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations. (12.4)

Although it seems rash for Lord Warburton to propose to Isabel so soon, he relies upon his stellar reputation as a reasonable guy to see him through it.

He showed his appetites and designs too simply and artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other people were present he talked too little about anything. And yet he was of supremely strong, clean make--which was so much: she saw the different fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits, the different fitted parts of armoured warriors – in plates of steel handsomely inlaid with gold. (13.10)

Caspar Goodwood, despite his modern American persona, has the timeless air of a chivalrous knight, suggesting that certain kinds of masculinity will endure forever.

"I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not in the least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men."

Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of the square. "No," he said; "women rarely boast of their courage. Men do so with a certain frequency."

"Men have it to boast of!"

"Women have it too. You've a great deal." (15.25-26)

Ralph notes aptly that women and men aren’t actually that different when it comes to courage – men are just expected to have it, and expect themselves to have it, while women are the opposite.

"No – I don't; I shall try to console myself with that. But there are a certain number of very dazzling men in the world, no doubt; and if there were only one it would be enough. The most dazzling of all will make straight for you. You'll be sure to take no one who isn't dazzling."

"If you mean by dazzling brilliantly clever," Isabel said – "and I can't imagine what else you mean – I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself."

"Find out how to live alone? I wish that, when you have, you'd teach me!" (16.12)

Isabel asserts her belief that she doesn’t need any man to teach her how to live. Caspar Goodwood admits his own weakness, saying that he can’t live without her, although he wishes that he could.

"You ought to see a great many men," Madame Merle remarked; "you ought to see as many as possible, so as to get used to them."

"Used to them?" Isabel repeated with that solemn stare which sometimes seemed to proclaim her deficient in the sense of comedy. "Why, I'm not afraid of them – I'm as used to them as the cook to the butcher-boys."

"Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That's what one comes to with most of them. You'll pick out, for your society, the few whom you don't despise." (23.1)

Madame Merle’s attitude towards men is disdainful. She only acknowledges that a few of them are worth associating with.

Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered her to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first cousin to that of pity. "Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine – !" she exclaimed in a long murmur. (46.22)

Osmond’s descent into pettiness upsets Isabel, for she had admired him so greatly before. She can still remember why she fell in love with him, and mourns the lesser man that he really is.

However this might be, Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. "Afraid of your husband?"

"Afraid of myself!" she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and then added: "If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my duty. That's what women are expected to be."

"Ah yes," laughed Ralph; "but to make up for it there's always some man awfully afraid of some woman!" (48.13)

Isabel mechanically espouses the traditional idea that women ought to fear their husbands, while Ralph half-seriously reminds her again that men and women are not so very different.