PORTRAIT OF A LADY, THE

Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characters with whom she is entangled - the good man and the evil one, between whom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom she must do battle - are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggests dazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting - in England and Italy - provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remaining crucial to the larger drama.