What shall we call our ‘self’? Where does it begin? Where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us - and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I’ve a great respect for things! One’s self - for other people - is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s furniture, one’s garments, the book one reads, the company one keeps - these things are all expressive.
—Madame Merle to Isabel Archer, The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James (1881).
