53 pages • 1 hour read
Emily FranklinThe Lioness of Boston
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Renewal and Reinvigoration Later in Life
Isabella lives a long life and challenges the expectations of her era by having formative experiences and self-discovery in midlife and beyond. Isabella begins a sexual relationship with Crawford when she is in her forties and he is more than a decade younger than her, subverting the idea that women over a certain age are not sexual and attractive. She reflects on “a slipping back to my younger years, that tantalizing hope and possibility not only in my body but in what I might mean to the world” (248). Throughout the novel, Isabella revels in her capacity for pleasure and new forms of self-awareness.
Isabella also redefines ideas of maternity. After losing her only child and having a miscarriage, she finds herself at odds with her era’s gendered expectations. She is supposed to be defined by biological motherhood, and when a doctor tells her she’ll never conceive again, it is as though he is condemning her to an unfulfilled life. However, she finds a nontraditional form of motherhood later in life when she and Jack unexpectedly become the guardians of their three young nephews. This prompts Isabella to observe that “life is not over in your middle years. For many, this is when we arrive as ourselves in the world” (189). Isabella’s embracing of motherhood and sexuality challenges the idea that femininity disappears at a specific age. Instead, she reimagines what her life can look like and expands the scope of her possibilities as a more mature woman.
Isabella experiences an even more dramatic revitalization when her father passes away and leaves her with a significant fortune. While Isabella has always had access to money, her inheritance renders her newly independent and able to spend more freely. It enables her to begin collecting artwork on a large scale and hone the collection that will eventually constitute the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Many of Isabella’s previous interests such as gardening, collecting rare books, and traveling influence her as an art collector, but she only fully embraces this path well into her life. This reinforces the idea that Isabella, building on her experiences as a younger woman, only begins to craft her legacy in earnest as an older adult. This extends even to her widowhood. While Jack is a devoted partner, his loss doesn’t stall her growth and exploration. She completes the design and construction of Fenway Court after Jack’s death in 1898, and her art collection and Fenway Court provide an answer to Isabella’s lifelong quest for meaning—a meaning that only comes after decades of longing and searching.
Resilience in the Wake of Tragedy
Isabella encounters a number of tragedies in her personal life: She loses a child, discovers that she will not be able to have more biological children, and experiences the deaths of many beloved family members, including the death of her nephew, Joe, by suicide. Isabella feels these losses keenly, but she also wants to live life fully and experience as much as possible. This lust for life and adventure gives her strength and a way of enduring life’s many tragedies.
In the novel, most of the letters between the author Henry James and Isabella are Emily Franklin’s fictional creations. However, Henry’s comment—“you have everything, you do everything, you enjoy everything” (350)—is a direct quotation from their historical correspondence. As Henry suggests, Isabella’s resilience is rooted in her enthusiasm and zest for life. When she and Jack travel to Europe after the loss of their son and Harriet’s death, Isabella is revitalized and able to imagine a more hopeful future. Later, she explains to Joe, “[T]ravel allowed me to forget myself, to find myself again” (284). Isabella’s appreciation of beauty and creativity motivates her to continue growing rather than stagnating in grief. Occasionally, she fuses art with sorrow. For example, she collects many images of the Madonna and Child, a common subject in Christian European art, because they remind her of her bond with her late son. She also makes her first major art purchase, a Vermeer painting, because it evokes memories of her childhood and parents.
While Isabella’s resilience is rooted in her character, it is also achieved via community. When she suffers losses, Isabella seeks out individuals with whom she feels a genuine sense of kinship and connection. Having true friends allows her to share her emotions and process them. For example, she tells Theodore Lyman, who has also lost a young child, “[W]e collect memories, and that is what we can carry with us” (146). Other characters, such as Julia and Joe, display less resilience, because they lack community or are unwilling to forge connections. Julia never fully processes her grief over the loss of a child and refuses to speak about it, and Joe loses hope that he will be able to find a sense of belonging for himself. Isabella’s resilience is partially a function of her economic privilege: Her intellectual curiosity and aesthetic appreciation have been honed through education, and she has the financial assets to travel, purchase the items that inspire her, and pursue her passion projects (including, eventually, the construction of Fenway Court). However, her enthusiasm for cultivating relationships and embracing life and new experiences is what truly allows her to maintain forward momentum and find joy—even in the face of tragic losses.
Defiance of Social Norms and Expectations
Throughout her life, Isabella consistently defies social norms and expectations. At first, her defiance stems from mistakes and miscalculations. However, over time, Isabella becomes more comfortable forging her own path and even learns to take pleasure in it. As a young bride who has newly relocated to Boston, Isabella is often hurt and disappointed by the rejection she experiences. She initially longs for a sense of community and belonging, especially from other women; however, she can’t help committing social faux pas and often finds herself feeling “as though we are somehow always in the wrong place” (10). At times, Isabella is aware that she is about to say or do something controversial but can’t bring herself to stop.
Isabella’s defiance of norms is partly rooted in her eschewing gender norms. Even when Isabella feels the most desperate longing to belong, she prioritizes a commitment to integrity and alignment with her values. While she values traditionally feminine roles like motherhood, she also values her independence and stands strong in her opinions, putting her at odds with high society. As she laments: “I wanted the belonging and yet loathed the neediness that ensnared me” (5). As she grows older, Isabella becomes more confident in her ideas and desires and less interested in integrating into Boston society. Travel broadens her horizons even further, and she befriends people for whom intellectual exchange is more important than social conformity.
Once she realizes that there is more to life than fitting into Boston high society, Isabella quickly becomes much more at ease with defying expectations and norms. She even comes to take pleasure in making defiant choices. Her growing confidence occasionally creates tension between her and Jack, who prefers that his wife at least pay lip service to social norms. However, Isabella’s rejection of social expectations allows her to have more wide-ranging experiences. It also, paradoxically, leads to her finally being embraced as an idiosyncratic but beloved Boston celebrity.
Isabella translates her unconventional sense of self into her design of Fenway Court and the art collection housed there. As a museum or gallery space, Fenway Court breaks many expected norms in terms of how the art is displayed: There are no labels or tags, the artwork is not grouped by period or location of origin, and the structure features a mixture of architectural styles and inspirations. However, Isabella’s namesake museum ends up being beloved and celebrated because of its very uniqueness, just as Isabella is eventually beloved for being unapologetically herself. This is embodied in the still-standing tradition of people named “Isabella” gaining free admission to the museum, making Fenway Court an homage to and celebration of its patroness.
