Significance of the Title

The title 'The Portrait of a Lady' works on more than one level.

• A word-portrait. The whole lesson is a loving verbal portrait — a word-picture — of the author's grandmother, drawn detail by detail: her white clothes, her wrinkled face, her rosary, her prayers, her sparrows. The author, like a painter, sets her whole character before us in words.
• A gentle contrast with the grandfather's portrait. Early in the piece the author mentions the grandfather's literal portrait hanging on the wall. The title quietly turns our attention from that lifeless picture on the mantelpiece to the living "portrait" the author himself paints of the grandmother. …