One of Henry James’s shorter novels, Washington Square ran first as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine in 1880. James considers his trademark displaced protagonist in the form of Catherine Sloper, daughter of a wealthy New York physician. While the New York setting is well drawn and adds interest, the story of an individual made to feel an outsider by her own family could occur anywhere.

With no mother to look after her social needs, and only an old-world aunt available for guidance, the plain Catherine matures lonely and isolated from others, allowing James to emphasize a favorite belief in the vital importance of shared experience. Lack of such sharing proves harmful to the emotional and spiritual well-being of all individuals. Catherine’s models fail her; her widowed Aunt Penniman mourns a dead husband, while Dr. Sloper mourns a dead wife. Their narrow-minded sorrow causes them to regard Catherine with near-contempt.

As she leaves for a ball in one scene dressed in a decidedly unattractive red dress, her father inanely compliments the dress, paying no heed to Catherine herself. In a painful irony, he never actually sees his own daughter as a real person. Had he done so, he would have recognized how completely out of place Catherine would be at the society event.

At last, romance appears in the form of poverty-stricken Morris Towns end, whose invitation to marry thrills Catherine. Although she accepts and anticipates escaping her father’s inattention with a new husband, Dr. Sloper suddenly becomes active in her life to forbid her marriage, recognizing Townsend as an opportunist. Dr. Sloper’s views appear outdated to Catherine, who is desperate for the comfort of human interaction. She assumes a more realistic stance, believing the fact that she will bring the money to the marriage unimportant.

Complicating matters is Mrs. Penniman’s strange and inappropriate attraction to Townsend. Catherine does not mind that her betrothed is a fortune hunter and remains devoted to their relationship during the year in Europe that her father enforces upon her. However, when Townsend understands Sloper will disinherit Catherine should she marry him, he ends their engagement.

While James’s protagonists generally find themselves navigating a foreign path as Americans abroad, Catherine feels a foreigner in her native surroundings. James makes the point that isolation and rejection is no easier to bear when guised in the misplaced concern Sloper feels—not toward Catherine as a human, but rather toward his own pride. He could not bear the idea of his daughter having so little pride as to marry beneath her social level, humiliating him.

James thus emphasizes his traditional conflict of individuality versus social expectations, but he reserves a triumph for Catherine in the plot’s conclusion. According to James’s journals, a near-identical incident to that featured in his novel occurred in England, which he followed with great curiosity. He depended purely on his imagination to calculate what might happen to those involved many years into the future as he concludes his novel.

Almost 20 years later, following Dr. Sloper’s death, Morris contacts Catherine, hopeful of renewing their relationship. At that point, having accepted her life as a spinster, Catherine exercises her independence from men at long last by rejecting his renewed attentions. Although she had to wait many years to gain comfort from her identity separate from others, she does at least achieve a balance and grace with conditions not of her own design.

Surrounded by the monumental egos of her father, aunt, and Morris, and without much sense of self-identity, even the unintelligent Catherine can act out of a basic sense of self-preservation.

The novel remains popular as a well-written piece, although James had not yet fully discovered his original voice. He seems to adopt American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s figure of pride in Dr. Sloper, while Mrs. Penniman resembles some of Charles Dickens’s sadly humorous characters. Washington Square has remained constantly in print and been converted to various media versions.

Bibliography
Bell, Milicent. Meaning in Henry James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Dupee, F. W. Henry James. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1974.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 19th century American literature, American Fiction, Aunt Penniman, Catherine Sloper, Catherine Sloper character arc, Charles Dickens influence, classic American novels, cornhill magazine serial, Dr. Sloper, emotional repression in literature, female protagonist isolation, Henry James, Henry James early work, Henry James novels, Henry James style, Henry James’s Washington Square, individuality vs social expectations, literary analysis Washington Square, literary character study, literature on pride and control, Morris Townsend, Nathaniel Hawthorne influence, New York setting in literature, psychological realism, realism in American fiction, social class in literature, spinsterhood in fiction, Washington Square, Washington Square adaptation, Washington Square summary, Washington Square themes