Introduction

84
Vanessa Mangione
“Isabel!” he uttered in amazement, as he hastened up to her. “My darling,
what ails you?”
“I am tired, I think,” she gently answered; “and coming into the house
again made me think of papa. I should like to go to my rooms, Archibald,
but I don’t know which they are.” (142)
Through her child-like character, Isabel is unable to voice her wishes; she feels her
powerlessness and has no other means to express it than through tears.
Although she has been idyllically happy in the beginning of her marriage, Isabel
regresses more and more into dependency, childlike behaviour, and idleness
neither her character nor her abilities have the chance to develop, as she is treated
like a naive girl. She feels hurt because her husband pays her less attention as soon
as the honeymoon is over. It is her only wish to be with Carlyle but since he has
to attend to his business he is gone most of the day. Mitchell suggests that Isabel
thought it was a woman’s business to maintain a perfect relationship with her
husband, and as she is unable to do that, she perceives herself as a failure. This
feeling of inferiority originates in Isabel’s idea that “if she were a better woman,
somehow, he would love her more” (The Fallen Angel 81). Furthermore, Mitchell
argues that since their betrothal the “marriage and husband are the focus of her
feelings of inferiority” and through her ultimate elopement “she strikes at [him] by
using the weapon which is most effective in the battle of sexes” (“Sentiment” 42).
Isabel has nothing else to do than to wait for him; thus, she gets bored, listless and
feels empty without him. Even though she is loved and cherished by him, she is
not allowed to grow up. Mitchell points out that she “stands to him as a child to a
parent” (The Fallen Angel, 80) as the marriage advances, the feeling of emptiness
and a need to be loved becomes her normal condition. She spends her time with
reading novels, and painfully bears Carlyle three children, which weakens her to
such an extent that she becomes an invalid. Sick, faint, fragile and oppressed by
her sister in law, Isabel slowly pines away in her own home. Accordingly, the suppression
and repression of her desires and her inability to communicate her unrest
to her husband, leads to an endless downward spiral, resulting in her fading away
and would eventually have lead to her death, as angels were supposed be content
no matter what.
In addition, she is tortured by an irrational and unfounded jealousy of her
husband’s friend Barbara Hare. As already mentioned, Barbara’s brother Richard
is involved in a murder case and the suspected murderer. Barbara, who is convinced
of his innocence, turns to Carlyle for help. Isabel sees Barbara as a rival for
his affections since she is actually is deeply in love with Carlyle. Isabel overhears a
conversation between two servants, in which they discuss Barbara’s love for Carlyle;
she is convinced that he has never loved her:
[The overheard conversation] might not, indeed would not, have made so
great an impression upon her had she been in strong health, but she was