Jane Campion's film version of The Picture of a Lady by Henry James Jane Campion's film version of Henry James's novel, The Picture of a Lady, offers to the viewer a sexually charged narrative of a young naive American girl in Victorian Europe. James's novel focuses on "what an exciting inner life can do for the person who leads it even if [a person's life] remains perfectly normal" (James 54). James was unable or unwilling to incorporate his characters' sexual thoughts, suggestions, and actions into his narrative beyond the first phase of the experience. For example, when Caspar takes Isabel into his arms and kisses her near the end of the novel, Isabel expresses sexuality, but that sexuality is short-lived: he looked at her for a moment through the twilight, and the next moment she felt the his arms. on her and his lips on her lips. His kiss was like a white flash, a flash that widened, widened again, and remained; and it was extraordinary as if, as she took him, she felt everything about his hard manhood that she had least liked, every aggressive fact of his face, of his figure, of his presence, justified by his intense identity and made one with this deed of possession. (James 636) This passage, like every other passage in the novel, dealing with touching or kissing between man and woman ends as it is read. James doesn't allow his characters to remember their sexuality. Dorothea Krook points out, “Talking about James's 'treatment' of the sexual theme in The Portrait of a Lady would be practically meaningless, were it not for the surprising episode between Isabel and Caspar Goodwood in the last pages of the book” (Krook 101 ). The sexual theme in Campion's film version of James' novel is not without meaning. Campion not only allows… half of the paper… 1881. New York: Penguin, 1986. Jones, Laura, adaptation. The portrait of a lady. By Henry James. Dir. Jane Campione. Videotape. PolyGram, 1997. Nadel, Alan. "The Search for Cinematic Identity and a Good Man: Jane Campion's Appropriation of the Portrait of James." Henry James Review 18.2 (1997): 180-183. Volpe, Edmond L. "James' Theory of Sex." Twentieth-century interpretations of The Portrait of a Lady: a collection of critical essays. Ed. Pietro Buitenhuis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968. Walton, Priscilla L. “Jane and James Go to the Movies: Postcolonial Lady Portraits.” Henry James Review 18.2 (1997): 187-190. Wexman, Virginia Wright. "The portrait of a body." Henry James Review 18.2 (1997): 184-186. Bianco, Roberto. "Love, marriage and divorce: the question of sexuality in the portrait of a lady". Review by Henry James 7.2-3 (1986): 59-71.