Reading Order
Washington Square Reading Order
Washington Square (1880) by Henry James is a relatively short, spare novel — by James's standards — about Catherine Sloper, a plain, dutiful, and not very intelligent daughter of a wealthy New York physician who falls in love with the charming and handsome Morris Townsend. Catherine's father, Dr. Sloper, is convinced that Townsend is a fortune hunter who is interested only in Catherine's inheritance, and he refuses to sanction the match. Townsend, who has borrowed money from his sister and has no visible means of income, eventually proves the Doctor right by abandoning Catherine when he discovers that Dr. Sloper intends to cut her out of his will if she marries him. After her father's death, Townsend returns and asks Catherine to reconsider; she refuses. The novel is a study in cruelty — the Doctor's intellectual cruelty toward his daughter, Townsend's mercenary exploitation of her affections — and in Catherine's gradual, painful growth from naïve vulnerability into a kind of cold, dignified self-possession.
Where to start
Washington Square (1880)
Complete Washington Square Book List
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Washington Square
Henry James·1880
Washington Square — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Dr. Sloper right about Morris Townsend?
Yes — Townsend is exactly what Dr. Sloper says he is: a charming, idle man without any means of support who is courting Catherine for her money. The novel is unusually direct for James in confirming the cynical reading, and this is part of what makes it so devastating: Catherine's love for Townsend is genuine, the reader may briefly doubt whether Dr. Sloper is right, but Townsend's abandonment of Catherine and his later return (when he discovers that she has now, after all, inherited the full estate) confirm everything Dr. Sloper suspected. The tragedy is that being right gives Dr. Sloper no moral credit — his method of being right was to humiliate and diminish his daughter, and his cruelty toward her is as clear as Townsend's mercenary nature.
How does Washington Square end?
Townsend returns after Dr. Sloper's death, when Catherine has inherited everything, and proposes that they resume their relationship. Catherine, who has had years to understand both what Townsend did to her and why, refuses — she is 'picking up her stitches' at the novel's final image, returning calmly to her embroidery, leaving Townsend to show himself out. The ending is quietly devastating: Catherine has survived, and learned, and become harder and colder, but the life she might have had — even a life with Townsend, flawed as it would have been — is now irretrievably gone. James refuses her any romantic consolation, and the final image of her embroidery is one of the most controlled and bitter endings in American fiction.
How was Washington Square adapted for film and stage?
Washington Square was adapted as The Heiress, first as a Broadway play (1947) with Wendy Hiller and Basil Rathbone and then as a film (1949) directed by William Wyler, with Olivia de Havilland (who won the Academy Award for Best Actress), Ralph Richardson, and Montgomery Clift as Townsend. The Wyler film is a masterpiece of Hollywood studio filmmaking and is often said to capture the spirit of James's novella more successfully than any other James adaptation. A later film adaptation (1997) with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, and Ben Chaplin is also notable. The story has also been adapted as a musical, with music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (Anya, 1965), and has been produced regularly on stage.
Is Washington Square a good introduction to Henry James?
Washington Square is generally considered the best introduction to Henry James for readers new to his work, because it is shorter, cleaner, and more conventionally plotted than his late novels. It lacks the elaborate subordinate clauses and the dense psychological interiority of The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, or The Wings of the Dove — it reads more like the psychological realism of his French contemporaries (Flaubert, Maupassant) than like the 'late James' style that readers often find challenging. After Washington Square, Daisy Miller and The Aspern Papers are good next steps before tackling The Portrait of a Lady or The Turn of the Screw.
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