The Lioness of Boston

Jack and Isabella’s trip to Europe in 1867 marks a significant turning point for Isabella. While she is resilient, the loss of her son, the death of her close friend Harriet, and the news that she will not be able to have more biological children leave her crushed. Jack demonstrates how well he knows her by intuiting that a change of scenery will help to recover her spirits. Isabella associates Europe with a happier time when she was younger, felt freer, and was more able to imagine a happy future. In the absence of motherhood, she must reconceptualize what the remainder of her life will look like. Through her character, the novel explores Renewal and Reinvigoration Later in Life. As Isabella ages, she finds new meaning in travel, beauty, and art.

Travel continues to broaden Isabella’s social and intellectual horizons. She becomes increasingly bold in forging connections with individuals who intrigue her, regardless of whether these friendships are conventional or socially appropriate. For example, on the voyage across the Atlantic, she joins a group of the ship’s staff during a raucous party, a surprising thing for a woman of Isabella’s social status to do. The narrative suggests that some of the staff are engaged in same-sex relationships: “male servers with male servers, maids laughing and holding hands” (121). Isabella notices that individuals with less money and social status are often freer to follow their own desires and live unconventionally.

These chapters explore the Defiance of Social Norms and Expectations. Isabella is consistently drawn to individuals who live unconventional lives, or who experience some form of social ostracism. Victor, the server who chats with Isabella, notes that “there are those of us who do not feel as though they have a seat at any particular table on any particular boat” (124), a boat being a metaphor for social circles and life. Like Victor, Isabella has never been at ease or confident in her ability to fulfill the roles expected of her, and she feels a sense of connection and kinship with those who feel the same.

Isabella grows confident in establishing meaningful friendships with other unconventional people. This leads to the inclusion of important secondary characters and historical figures. Historically, Theodore Lyman was a prominent scientist and politician. His cousin, Charles Eliot Norton, who also features in the novel, was an art historian and Harvard professor. Norton traveled widely, studied art and literature, and translated several works by the medieval Italian writer and philosopher Dante. Isabella’s friendships with these men are transformative; they allow her to focus on the exchange of ideas and put her in contact with people who admire her intellect and curiosity. Her ease in these friendships contrasts with her struggles to bond with the women of Boston high society. However, Isabella also has access to these friendships because she is a very wealthy woman of significant leisure, one who possesses high social capital and the ability to support causes she believes in.

Isabella’s travel and friendships, combined with her significant financial assets, spark her interest in collecting. She begins with rare books, inspired by Norton’s work on Dante. Isabella’s pursuit and acquisition of rare and costly objects inspires a pleasure that is almost sexual. As she and Jack watch a fire raging through Boston, she initiates a sexual encounter, stoked by newfound confidence: “I was the sort of person who could not separate the strands of my own wanting—if I wanted a first edition of Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova […] then I also wanted Jack in my bed” (169). Historically, the Great Fire of Boston burned on November 9, 1872, and caused significant destruction and loss of life. In the novel, it symbolizes how Isabella’s passion for collecting rare objects is beginning to ignite. This desire will dominate the rest of her life; Franklin depicts it as becoming entwined with and even subsuming Isabella’s sexual desire.

The narrative foreshadows Isabella’s fascination with acquiring specific works of art with Titian’s painting The Rape of Europa. Titian completed the painting between 1560 and 1562. It depicts a scene from classical mythology, in which the god Zeus takes the form of a bull to abduct a beautiful young woman named Europa. Historically, Isabella purchased this painting in 1896; it was the first authenticated painting by Titian to be owned and displayed in America. In the novel, Isabella becomes fascinated by the painting because the colors of the bull echo a dress she has recently purchased by the Parisian couturier Charles Frederick Worth. Historically, decades later, Isabella displays the painting at Fenway Court next to fabric from the gown. As of 2024, the painting can still be viewed with the textile (now a reproduction) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The painting depicts Europa as helpless and passive in the face of Zeus’s desire. Within the world of the novel, the painting echoes Isabella’s frustration at the limited options available to women. Isabella’s own desire to acquire objects arguably becomes equally rapacious over time. Europa’s name gave rise to the name Europe. The image of her being carried off by a powerful figure, without consent, might allude to Isabella’s acquiring objects and removing them from the original sites of their provenance. Isabella’s removing objects from their homelands becomes even more complex and potentially problematic when she travels to regions such as Asia and the Middle East, where the impacts of colonialism have played a significant role.

While Isabella largely spends the period between 1866 and 1875 reconciling herself to the absence of motherhood, she ends up with an untraditional family, allowing her to be a caregiver. In the Intermezzo 2 section, Isabella specifically notes how self-development, growth, and change can occur at all life stages: “[L]ife is not over in your middle years. For many, this is when we arrive as ourselves in the world” (189).

In this way, the novel continues to explore Renewal and Reinvigoration Later In Life. Isabella is 35 years old when she becomes (alongside Jack) the guardian of her nephews. Additionally, she only begins seriously collecting art after receiving a large inheritance from her father in 1896, when she is 56 years old. When Fenway Court opens, she is 63. By showing Isabella continuing to change and thrive throughout her entire lifespan, Franklin subverts a common narrative arc in novels, which focuses on a young woman and concludes with her becoming a wife and/or mother. Franklin also uses a historical setting and figure to comment on the challenges that women still face in the modern era.