ABSTRACT
One of the questions which the experiment raises is whether human freedom is after all no more than freedom from practical constraints and limitations, something money can buy. At one point Isabel comes near to thinking that it is. Walking alone through the London streets, and thinking of her plans to spend the winter travelling wherever she wants in the company of her friend, Madame Merle, she has a vivid sense of 'the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty' (II, p. 35). But she is preoccupied also with the question of how she ought to act. 'A large fortune', she remarks, 'means freedom and I'm afraid of that. It's such a fine thing, and one should make good use of it' (I, p. 320). Her situation thus highlights some vexed questions. Is it possible to form a rational plan of life and stick to it, and, having done so, how can one rationally identify the appropriate premisses for making decisions in the light of such a plan? On the one hand, Isabel feels justified in treating her own wants as the premisses of her practical reasoning, since she has 'an unquenchable desire to think well of herself ... a theory ... that one ... should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse' (I, p. 68); on the other she has intimations of an objective moral order and a fear of doing 'anything wrong'. At first she
thinks she can identify the wrong - it is 'to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel' (I, pp. 68-9) - but as her situation develops, everything becomes more problematical.
