SAT Reading & Writing Practice Set - The Portrait of a Lady (Adapted)
When Isabel Archer first refused Lord Warburton in the English garden at Gardencourt, she had told
herself that she was declining not the man but the pattern of life his title and estates seemed to
represent. She wished to see the world and judge it for herself, not to have England, with its parks and
politics, given to her ready-made. Ralph Touchett’s secret gift—his persuading his dying father to leave
Isabel a large share of the family fortune—seemed to open that prospect further: money, Ralph thought,
would make her “free,” letting her experiment with her imagination rather than marrying at random for
support. For a time in Europe, amid picture galleries and conversations with clever people, Isabel
believed this vision was being justified. She turned aside Caspar Goodwood’s hard, American
persistence as firmly as she had refused Warburton’s noble devotion, telling herself that her
independence was a thing she must test before she could give it up. It was only when Madame Merle,
with her agreeable tact and understanding, began to speak warmly of Gilbert Osmond—an obscure but
fastidious American living in Rome—that Isabel felt she had perhaps found a man with no worldly
claims to overshadow her own spirit, someone with whom she might share a life without feeling
absorbed. (James, 1881)
The reality of her marriage to Osmond, lived out in a Roman palace among carefully chosen pictures
and porcelains, did not match that first inward sketch. Osmond, once so modestly detached, revealed
himself as a man who needed every object, including his wife, to reflect credit on his taste and authority.
Isabel’s fortune, which she had fancied as a kind of air about her, became in his hands an instrument
for arranging his own comfort and display. The daughter he presented as wholly his—Pansy, docile and
eager to please—became for Isabel at once a charge and a consolation; if she could no longer be sure
of her own freedom, she could still try to secure some gentleness in the life mapped out for the girl.
Madame Merle’s visits, which had once seemed friendly and disinterested, now cast a different light
across the drawing-room. In the quiet intervals between social duties and domestic coldness, Isabel’s
mind returned, again and again, to the conversation at Gardencourt in which Madame Merle had
spoken so artfully of Osmond’s “good taste,” as if her own hand had never touched the arrangement.
(James, 1881)
The revelation came not in a single thunderclap but through a series of half-acknowledged impressions
that at last could no longer be kept apart. Countess Gemini’s spiteful disclosures, Madame Merle’s
sudden, almost desperate tenderness toward Pansy, Osmond’s insistence that Pansy be married only
where it would serve his pride—these threads, once merely puzzling, wove themselves into a pattern
Isabel could no longer refuse to see. She understood that Madame Merle and Osmond had been
intimate long before she came to Rome, that Pansy was the child of that connection, and that her own
marriage had been, in part, the fruit of their designs upon her fortune. The recognition did not produce
the violent outburst that a simpler nature might have offered. Isabel felt, instead, the weight of having
been treated as a piece in someone else’s game, and of having, by her own eagerness to “see life,”
helped move herself into check. Yet even within that sense of betrayal, she could not forget that Pansy’s
devotion to her was genuine, nor that Madame Merle’s very ruin seemed bound up with a talent for
sympathy turned toward selfish ends. (James, 1881)
When word came that Ralph Touchett was dying at Gardencourt, Isabel’s wish to go to him met the hard
surface of Osmond’s will. He forbade the journey, making it plain that any step she took beyond his
permission would be counted as a defiance to be paid for later. The night after their quarrel, Isabel sat
alone in the Roman house and measured, as accurately as her conscience allowed, what she owed to
, her marriage, to the friend whose fortune she had used to choose it, and to the stepdaughter whose
future seemed to depend on her. She went to England anyway, arriving in time to watch Ralph’s life draw
to its close and to confess to him, with a frankness she had never before allowed herself, the misery of
her Roman existence. Ralph, grieving over the “experiment” he had made of her liberty, urged that she
might still recover some portion of it. After his death, under a gray English sky, Caspar Goodwood
pressed her to escape with him altogether, offering a kind of violent rescue that seemed to promise
freedom at the cost of every bond she had formed. Isabel, shaken by his kiss and by the intensity of her
own response, pulled away and, by the next day, had gone back toward Rome. Whether she went to
resume her place in Osmond’s house or to reclaim Pansy and redraw the pattern of her life from within
it, the story does not say outright; it leaves Isabel walking back into the frame of her own portrait, with
her sense of duty and her wounded independence still struggling for the same space. (James, 1881)
(Adapted from the novel The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. how Isabel’s inheritance allows her to avoid difficult moral choices.
B. how Isabel’s desire for freedom and experience leads her into a marriage that feels like a
trap, and how she later struggles to decide what, if anything, she can still reclaim.
C. how Lord Warburton finally convinces Isabel to accept his proposal.
D. how Ralph Touchett and Caspar Goodwood secretly plot to ruin Isabel’s life.
2. Across the four paragraphs, Isabel is presented chiefly as a character who
A. moves from naive confidence about her ability to direct her own life toward a painful
recognition of how others have manipulated her choices.
B. accepts every proposal she receives.
C. values money above all other considerations.
D. never doubts Osmond’s affection for her.
3. The first paragraph’s account of Isabel’s refusals of Warburton and Goodwood mainly serves to
A. show that she dislikes both English and American men.
B. establish her early conviction that marriage would limit the freedom she hopes to use, and
her belief that she can afford to wait for a union that preserves her independence.
C. prove that she is incapable of forming attachments.
D. suggest that she intends never to marry under any circumstances.
4. Taken together, the second and third paragraphs primarily highlight
A. how Osmond’s taste in art improves Isabel’s appreciation of European culture.
B. the contrast between Isabel’s imagined equality in marriage and the reality of being used as
an ornament and a source of income in a scheme involving Osmond and Madame Merle.
C. that Pansy is indifferent to Isabel.
D. that Madame Merle is unfairly accused by the other characters.
When Isabel Archer first refused Lord Warburton in the English garden at Gardencourt, she had told
herself that she was declining not the man but the pattern of life his title and estates seemed to
represent. She wished to see the world and judge it for herself, not to have England, with its parks and
politics, given to her ready-made. Ralph Touchett’s secret gift—his persuading his dying father to leave
Isabel a large share of the family fortune—seemed to open that prospect further: money, Ralph thought,
would make her “free,” letting her experiment with her imagination rather than marrying at random for
support. For a time in Europe, amid picture galleries and conversations with clever people, Isabel
believed this vision was being justified. She turned aside Caspar Goodwood’s hard, American
persistence as firmly as she had refused Warburton’s noble devotion, telling herself that her
independence was a thing she must test before she could give it up. It was only when Madame Merle,
with her agreeable tact and understanding, began to speak warmly of Gilbert Osmond—an obscure but
fastidious American living in Rome—that Isabel felt she had perhaps found a man with no worldly
claims to overshadow her own spirit, someone with whom she might share a life without feeling
absorbed. (James, 1881)
The reality of her marriage to Osmond, lived out in a Roman palace among carefully chosen pictures
and porcelains, did not match that first inward sketch. Osmond, once so modestly detached, revealed
himself as a man who needed every object, including his wife, to reflect credit on his taste and authority.
Isabel’s fortune, which she had fancied as a kind of air about her, became in his hands an instrument
for arranging his own comfort and display. The daughter he presented as wholly his—Pansy, docile and
eager to please—became for Isabel at once a charge and a consolation; if she could no longer be sure
of her own freedom, she could still try to secure some gentleness in the life mapped out for the girl.
Madame Merle’s visits, which had once seemed friendly and disinterested, now cast a different light
across the drawing-room. In the quiet intervals between social duties and domestic coldness, Isabel’s
mind returned, again and again, to the conversation at Gardencourt in which Madame Merle had
spoken so artfully of Osmond’s “good taste,” as if her own hand had never touched the arrangement.
(James, 1881)
The revelation came not in a single thunderclap but through a series of half-acknowledged impressions
that at last could no longer be kept apart. Countess Gemini’s spiteful disclosures, Madame Merle’s
sudden, almost desperate tenderness toward Pansy, Osmond’s insistence that Pansy be married only
where it would serve his pride—these threads, once merely puzzling, wove themselves into a pattern
Isabel could no longer refuse to see. She understood that Madame Merle and Osmond had been
intimate long before she came to Rome, that Pansy was the child of that connection, and that her own
marriage had been, in part, the fruit of their designs upon her fortune. The recognition did not produce
the violent outburst that a simpler nature might have offered. Isabel felt, instead, the weight of having
been treated as a piece in someone else’s game, and of having, by her own eagerness to “see life,”
helped move herself into check. Yet even within that sense of betrayal, she could not forget that Pansy’s
devotion to her was genuine, nor that Madame Merle’s very ruin seemed bound up with a talent for
sympathy turned toward selfish ends. (James, 1881)
When word came that Ralph Touchett was dying at Gardencourt, Isabel’s wish to go to him met the hard
surface of Osmond’s will. He forbade the journey, making it plain that any step she took beyond his
permission would be counted as a defiance to be paid for later. The night after their quarrel, Isabel sat
alone in the Roman house and measured, as accurately as her conscience allowed, what she owed to
, her marriage, to the friend whose fortune she had used to choose it, and to the stepdaughter whose
future seemed to depend on her. She went to England anyway, arriving in time to watch Ralph’s life draw
to its close and to confess to him, with a frankness she had never before allowed herself, the misery of
her Roman existence. Ralph, grieving over the “experiment” he had made of her liberty, urged that she
might still recover some portion of it. After his death, under a gray English sky, Caspar Goodwood
pressed her to escape with him altogether, offering a kind of violent rescue that seemed to promise
freedom at the cost of every bond she had formed. Isabel, shaken by his kiss and by the intensity of her
own response, pulled away and, by the next day, had gone back toward Rome. Whether she went to
resume her place in Osmond’s house or to reclaim Pansy and redraw the pattern of her life from within
it, the story does not say outright; it leaves Isabel walking back into the frame of her own portrait, with
her sense of duty and her wounded independence still struggling for the same space. (James, 1881)
(Adapted from the novel The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. how Isabel’s inheritance allows her to avoid difficult moral choices.
B. how Isabel’s desire for freedom and experience leads her into a marriage that feels like a
trap, and how she later struggles to decide what, if anything, she can still reclaim.
C. how Lord Warburton finally convinces Isabel to accept his proposal.
D. how Ralph Touchett and Caspar Goodwood secretly plot to ruin Isabel’s life.
2. Across the four paragraphs, Isabel is presented chiefly as a character who
A. moves from naive confidence about her ability to direct her own life toward a painful
recognition of how others have manipulated her choices.
B. accepts every proposal she receives.
C. values money above all other considerations.
D. never doubts Osmond’s affection for her.
3. The first paragraph’s account of Isabel’s refusals of Warburton and Goodwood mainly serves to
A. show that she dislikes both English and American men.
B. establish her early conviction that marriage would limit the freedom she hopes to use, and
her belief that she can afford to wait for a union that preserves her independence.
C. prove that she is incapable of forming attachments.
D. suggest that she intends never to marry under any circumstances.
4. Taken together, the second and third paragraphs primarily highlight
A. how Osmond’s taste in art improves Isabel’s appreciation of European culture.
B. the contrast between Isabel’s imagined equality in marriage and the reality of being used as
an ornament and a source of income in a scheme involving Osmond and Madame Merle.
C. that Pansy is indifferent to Isabel.
D. that Madame Merle is unfairly accused by the other characters.
