“The Portrait of a Lady” (post 5) by Henry James: Isabel hears a voice, suddenly switches attitude, unintentional symptoms of multiple personality

Isabel has just rejected a marriage proposal by Lord Warburton, who is rich, attractive, and accommodating. The best guess as to why she has done this is that she fears a loss of independence.

But the novel has pointedly provided the example of her aunt, who is married to a rich man, but spends most of the year in a different country and lives quite independently. So both Isabel and the reader find her behavior puzzling.

Meanwhile, there have been two more clues that Isabel might have multiple personality. There is no indication that the author has done this intentionally; they are mentioned inadvertently, in passing.

Isabel hears a voice

“A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist—murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her things besides—things which both contradicted and confirmed each other” (1, p. 114).

Instincts don’t speak. Alternate personalities do. Isabel is hearing from something that is personified and speaking to her: It is “not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist…murmured…told her things.” 

Isabel switches personalities

Puzzled by her own rejection of the marriage proposal, she says, “ ‘I don’t care if I don’t meet anyone else. I like Lord Warburton quite well enough.’ She fell into that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled…her interlocutors” (1, p. 124).

When a person with undiagnosed multiple personality suddenly switches personalities—which typically remain incognito—all that may be noted is that the person has a startling change in attitude. And it is implied that this was not Isabel’s only episode.

1. Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady [1881/1908]. Editing, Introduction, Notes by Roger Luckhurst. New York, Oxford University Press, 2009.