Analysis Of The Third Suitor And A Husband By Gilbert Osmond

5. The Third Suitor and a husband – Gilbert Osmond

Osmond is the third suitor designed to illuminate Isabel’s character. She meets Osmond in Rome through a subtle manipulation of his former mistress, Madame Merle. Osmond is a Europeanized American, a classical case of Jamesian expatriates, and through him, James once more developed his international theme. He lives with his daughter Pansy in a villa on a hill just outside Florence; the villa is filled with objects of art. Before Isabel meets him, Madame Merle draws his portrait for her in the light that would suit Isabel. She presents him as a devoted and loving father, an exceedingly clever man of cultivated taste, poor but proud, a person who talks little about his poverty and seems to expect nothing from anybody. Although he is “a man to be distinguished”, Madam Merle further states, he has “no career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future, no anything.” Gilbert Osmond is highly weird, strange, odd man. He is a good actor and he manages to seduce Isabel, hiding his real characteristics, his real face, and presenting himself as some kind of a victim reconciled with his destiny and aware of his situation in life. When we add Isabel’s desire to sacrifice herself in a way, to help someone, to serve and use

Being familiar with this, we could make comparisons, especially between men in the novel, Isabel’s suitors. Each of them is specific and much different from the other one, and with their good or bad features, they waited to become Isabel’s choice. However, she made just one, final choice, and we are left with so many questions, but it is what a great novel is about – it will not give us the answers, but it will take us through some amazing roads and blow our