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Gilbert Osmond
Madam Merle, one of the novel’s antagonists and Mrs. Touchett’s friend, is similarly an American expatriate and an unconventional woman. She is a widow who lacks fortune, yet manages to spend her time traveling through Europe and the United States by using her social connections. Isabel Archer greatly admires Merle’s charisma and accomplishments when they meet at Gardencourt, and the two form a strong friendship. However, Merle conspires to set up the newly wealthy Isabel with her friend Gilbert Osmond. She wants to see them married, despite their incompatibilities in values and desires. Madame Merle’s strange intentions are later revealed as an attempt to secure Isabel’s inheritance for Osmond and his daughter Pansy’s benefit—it turns out that Pansy is the result of Osmond and Merle’s longtime affair, but her parentage has remained a secret throughout her life. Merle wishes to ensure their future comforts at the expense of Isabel’s happiness. She is therefore a highly ambitious character who understands the desires of others and manipulates them to her advantage. Her relationship with Pansy is ambiguous; Pansy is unaware of her parentage, and despite Merle’s efforts to win favor with the girl as a family friend, Pansy seems to dislike her mother. Madame Merle lacks moral conviction, as demonstrated by her affair with Osmond and her encouraging the union between Isabel and Osmond despite knowing Osmond’s cruelty. Merle is matched with Osmond as the narrative villains who bring down the protagonist. She is also a foil for Isabel, as although both are intent upon achieving personal freedom, Isabel shows the moral high road in that she will not sacrifice her morality and social duty in her pursuit for independence. Furthermore, Isabel pities Merle when she finds out the truth of Pansy’s parentage and the callous scheming that Merle demonstrates.
Madame Merle Quotes in The Portrait of a Lady
The The Portrait of a Lady quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Merle or refer to Madame Merle. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 19
Quotes
“Even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I’m rather stout, but I must 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.”
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“You should live in your own land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we’re not good Americans we’re certainly poor Europeans; we’ve no natural place here. We’re mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven’t our feet in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl.”
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Chapter 35
Quotes
The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. […] He was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a present of incalculable value. […] What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one’s thought on a polished, elegant surface? […] this lady’s intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one—a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served dessert.
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Chapter 52
Quotes
Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle has lost her pluck and saw before her the phantom of exposure—this in itself was a revenge, this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day.
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Chapter 54
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“She made a convenience of me.”
“Ah,” cried Mrs. Touchett, “so she did of me! She does of every one.”
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Madame Merle Quotes in The Portrait of a Lady
The The Portrait of a Lady quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Merle or refer to Madame Merle. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 19
Quotes
“Even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I’m rather stout, but I must 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.”
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Explanation and Analysis:
“You should live in your own land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we’re not good Americans we’re certainly poor Europeans; we’ve no natural place here. We’re mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven’t our feet in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl.”
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Chapter 35
Quotes
The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. […] He was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a present of incalculable value. […] What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one’s thought on a polished, elegant surface? […] this lady’s intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one—a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served dessert.
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Chapter 52
Quotes
Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle has lost her pluck and saw before her the phantom of exposure—this in itself was a revenge, this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day.
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Chapter 54
Quotes
“She made a convenience of me.”
“Ah,” cried Mrs. Touchett, “so she did of me! She does of every one.”
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