Portrait in Brownstone by Louis Auchincloss
"Portrait in Brownstone," written by Louis Auchincloss, delves into the life of Ida Trask Hartley, a woman in her sixties who experiences a profound self-realization later in life. The narrative intertwines themes of office politics and the evolving female consciousness against the backdrop of a changing American social landscape. Ida has spent much of her life overshadowed by her ambitious husband, Derrick, and her glamorous cousin, Geraldine, whose tragic demise catalyzes Ida's awakening. As she reflects on her upbringing and her role within her family, Ida emerges as a keen observer and storyteller, navigating her past relationships and education, including her time at Barnard College.
The novel portrays Ida as she confronts personal and familial challenges, particularly in interactions with Derrick and their children. Her journey leads her to assert herself when faced with her husband’s infidelity and her son’s precarious situation, ultimately taking control of Derrick's firm after a life-altering event. Auchincloss captures a pivotal moment in American history where women begin to find their voices and agency. While Ida's actions might not fully align with modern notions of liberation, her character represents a significant shift in women's societal roles during that era. The narrative's structure, juxtaposing Ida's first-person perspective with a detached third-person view of the other characters, enhances the exploration of her internal growth and evolving identity.
Portrait in Brownstone by Louis Auchincloss
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1962
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Combining the narrative approach of The House of Five Talents with the general subject matter of his earlier Wall Street novels, Auchincloss in Portrait in Brownstone explores both office politics and the emergent female consciousness through the eyes of one Ida Trask Hartley, who, around the age of sixty, begins at last to perceive the full extent of her experience and talents. Bookish and somewhat retiring, Ida has spent most of her life in the shadow of her hard-driving husband, Derrick, a minister’s son from New England, and her glamorous cousin Geraldine Denison, Derrick’s sometime mistress. Indeed, it is Geraldine’s suicide, following a long slide into alcoholism and depression, that begins the process of Ida’s awakening and liberation, a process that forms the true plot of the novel.
Like Gussie Millinder in The House of Five Talents, Ida Hartley is a keen observer and gifted storyteller. In search of self-discovery, she revisits her past, recalling her mother’s close-knit extended family, the Denisons, and her uncle Linnaeus Tremain, a brilliant, perceptive financier. Although all the male Denisons are gainfully employed and most have been to college, it is Tremain’s sustained generosity that enables them all to live in relative comfort and that allows Ida to attend college, the first woman in her family to do so.
Enrolled at Barnard College and interested in liberal politics, Ida soon finds herself debating political issues with Derrick Hartley, a Harvard graduate who, having made a small fortune with a Boston brokerage firm, has moved to New York with hopes of working for Linnaeus Tremain. Little deterred by Tremain’s insistence that no vacancy exists in his firm, Derrick quite literally “dines out” on his accumulated savings while waiting for the older man to change his mind. It is at those dinners that Derrick makes the acquaintance both of Ida Trask, who will fall in love with him, and of Ida’s mother, who will persuade her brother-in-law to give Derrick a job. As Tremain in time learns, much to his dismay, he has at last met his match.
Ida asks her cousin and perpetual rival Geraldine to entertain Derrick during a weekend in 1912 when she needs to be out of town. Derrick, studious and reserved, soon loses his heart and head to the flirtatious, fickle Geraldine, who does not return his love. In time, Ida wins Derrick back and marries him. A daughter and then a son are soon born to the Hartleys, whose marriage proceeds smoothly and without major incident until 1935, when Geraldine, recently widowed, entices Derrick into an affair with divorce and remarriage in mind. Derrick, meanwhile, has prospered in his work, somewhat at the expense of his chosen mentor Tremain. Having in effect forced Tremain’s retirement, he goes so far as to have the older man’s name removed from the firm’s corporate name after his death, a gesture which deeply offends Ida.
Following Geraldine’s death early in 1950, Ida at last takes stock of her life, noticing that her daughter Dorcas and Dorcas’s second husband are about to do to Derrick what Derrick once did to “Uncle Linn.” At the same time, she perceives that her son Hugo, still unmarried as he approaches forty, has embarked on a potentially dangerous affair with a divorce-bound married woman. Mustering all the accumulated resources of her intelligence, education, and experience, Ida moves quickly to intervene in both cases, assuming control of Derrick’s firm after he suffers a sudden, provoked heart attack and buying for Hugo a sufficient share of stock in the company for which he works that he will be able to name himself president, thus ensuring his eligibility for marriage to a much younger distant cousin and removing the married woman from his life.
To be sure, Ida’s sudden assertiveness stops somewhat short of “liberation” as perceived by later generations. Still, Auchincloss, through Ida, has successfully portrayed a moment of transition in American social history, when women of his mother’s generation, at least the lucky ones, discovered at last the courage of their convictions.
Significantly, Ida is the only character in Portrait in Brownstone allowed to speak for herself; the sections of the novel devoted to Derrick and their children are narrated in an affectless third-person style reminiscent of the author’s Wall Street novels, providing counterpoint as Ida seeks within herself the resources needed to assume the control for which she has been well trained.
Bibliography
Bryer, Jackson R. Louis Auchincloss and His Critics: A Bibliographical Record. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977.
Dahl, Christopher C. Louis Auchincloss. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1986.
Gelderman, Carol. Louis Auchincloss: A Writer’s Life. New York: Crown, 1993.
Parsell, David B. Louis Auchincloss. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Piket, Vincent. Louis Auchincloss: The Growth of a Novelist. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
Tuttleton, James W. “Louis Auchincloss at 80.” New Criterion 16, no. 2 (October 1, 1997): 32-36.
Tuttleton, James W. “Louis Auchincloss: The Image of Lost Elegance and Virtue.” In A Fine Silver Thread: Essays on American Writing and Criticism. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998.
Vidal, Gore. “The Great World and Louis Auchincloss.” In United States. New York: Random House, 1993.