[...] Reading is, of course, a major motif in the book, which is appropriate in a story about interpretation and misinterpretation — about Isabel Archer’s failure to ‘read’ her situation correctly; but that is no excuse for us to imitate Isabel’s attempt to re-write reality to her liking. And if the novel is taken to be about reading as one or two commentators have strangely suggested, the heroine’s fate stands as a dire warning to critics. As if to underline this point, James quotes Turgenev to the effect that it is pointless arguing with a writer’s choice of material, which is as personal to him as his own character. Anyone who quarrels with the novelist’s subjects must ‘point out' what they should have been. Better still, according to James, if they learn to read properly and concentrate on their proper critical function, which is not to argue with the choice of subject but to discuss its treatment. For this is what ‘pointing out’ amounts to: the study of how, not what.