Isabel Archer resembles a modern figure trapped in an older frame. Even after moving to Europe, this bright young American would like to keep the possibility of free choice resulting from a considerable annuity, which is why she shows an instinctive desire to "see, try, know". This deviates her from the conventions of the late nineteenth century and makes her all the more irresistible in the eyes of those who see the single lady's determination to reject tradition as a capital catch. The soulful, generous, but also naive heroine hesitates between suitors embodied by a wealthy lord, a ridiculous man pursuing her from across the ocean, and even a seriously ill cousin. She politely rejects them all for the sake of inner growth - and at the same time she is so fierce in her directness that she assumes the same honest intentions from the other side, which ultimately leads to a fatal error.

Henry James' master novel - also known from the film adaptation directed by Jane Campion and starring Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich - tells the story of the meanness hidden deep beneath and the scars for life. However, the work created against the backdrop of the Venetian lagoon, which symbolizes the fallen Old World, did not dwell on the frustrations of seemingly innocent Americans without a proper past, as depicted by the author's compatriots Hawthorne or Twain. The astonishing power of the prose stems from the felt subtlety with which the magician of "double-edged irony" observes the hidden landscape of human motivations. In the play of lights and shadows, impressions and hints, James exceeds the limits of a period psychological novel to such an extent that the result captivates the reader even a hundred years after the writer's death.