I admit I’m a little stumped with my sequel to “The Portrait of a Lady.” I have been questioning where we find the Osmonds after they have been married for more than three years and cannot stand one another. Things were dicey enough before she found out conclusively that he married her for her money, blabbed by his sister, the Countess Gemini. We know her reaction to this information: she flees to England for her cousin Ralph’s funeral against her husband’s wishes and does some serious soul-searching. This could have been the end of the marriage but she returns to Rome, her reasoning left to conjecture though there has been much speculation in the critical essays. I have reflected on her motives in other posts and think I’ve thrashed that all out.
Meanwhile, I had all sorts of ideas for Isabel’s future: leaving Osmond and becoming an activist/feminist, founding a children’s hospital, opening a gallery, a tea shop for expatriates in Rome, Osmond dying, finding new love, having more children, moving to Gardencourt, Pansy’s marriage, Madame Merle’s return, the Countess Gemini’s plight. I wrote outlines for all sorts of story-lines and have written reams of dialogue.
In the end, I decided all I want my sequel to do is explain how the couple has come to the impasse they’re in, solve the riddle if possible and do what Isabel said she would do in “TPOAL, save Pansy. I find I don’t care about their future as a novelistic format. I’m sticking with the past and the present.
I’ve got all sorts of things going on and nothing that could be called conflict/action/resolution but HJ wrote what he referred to as a character-driven novel and left a few threads hanging loose. I have come up with an idea from one of those loose threads. Or as the master would say, another brick. Meanwhile I’ll keep you posted and may even give some highlights here and there. I think it’s time to bring parts of my sequel into the light of the blogosphere.
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