本文以班乃迪克提出的「恥感文化」（shame culture）理解詹姆斯在《仕女圖》中所再現的個人主義與舊歐洲群體主義間的衝突，分析小說將戲劇內斂於女主角伊莎貝兒心理的恥感美學。藉由自由間接引語，詹姆斯似欲以個人內在性（interiority）的確立對抗群體主義文化加諸在伊莎貝兒身上的從眾壓力。然而內在心理世界與外在現實的二分畢竟失之武斷。透過賽菊克所提出之周圍操演性（periperformativity）概念，筆者主張伊莎貝兒在自由間接引語中使用此類言說反抗恥感社會戲劇性將人視為運作工具或欺騙對象的傳統操演語言（performative language），形成在戲劇性邊緣反戲劇性的辯證結構。由於周圍操演性語言遊走於描述與操演之間的中介性，使得伊莎貝兒的自由間接引語往往產生無法明確辨識的戲劇性效果，因此解構了內在心理與外在戲劇的二元對立，我們可藉此檢視小說的開放式結局如何演繹此戲劇性／反戲劇性的複雜辯證，並自其中析辨詹姆斯將心理溶併於世界的愛默森式個人主義傳統。

This paper employs Ruth Benedict’s concept “shame culture” to understand the conflict between individualism and the communitarian tradition of Europe represented in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. I analyze the novel’s aesthetic of shame that relocates drama in the heroine’s introverted psychology. Through the free indirect discourse, James seemingly intends to establish an individuated interiority to ward off the conformist pressure imposed by European communitarian culture. Such divide between an internal psychological world and an external reality, however, risks oversimplification. To redress this pitfall, I invoke Eve Sedgwick’s notion of “periperformativity” to argue that Isabel uses her free indirect discourse to rebel against conventional performative language often seen in the theatricality of a shame society epitomized as a lie or strategy to treat people as means to an end. Her resistance constitutes an anti-theatrical mode at the margins of theatricality. Due to the liminal character of periperformatives which usually traverse the boundaries of constatives and performatives, her free indirect discourse often produces unintelligible dramatic effects which culminate in a deconstruction of the internal psychology/external drama divide. This understanding can lay bare how the novel’s ambiguous ending demonstrates an intricate dialectic of theatricality/anti-theatricality and teases out the Emersonian tradition of individualism characterized by the melding of self into a depsychologized world.