Reading Order
Washington Square Reading Order
Henry James's Washington Square (1880) is a standalone novel — there is no series and no sequel. Catherine Sloper, the plain and wealthy daughter of a distinguished New York physician, falls in love with the charming Morris Townsend; her father believes Townsend is only interested in her money and forbids the match. James's shortest and most accessible novel, set in the Washington Square world of 1840s New York, and the best starting point for readers new to his work.
Where to start
Washington Square
Complete Washington Square Book List
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Washington Square
Henry James·1880·Standalone novel — Catherine Sloper, her father, and Morris Townsend in 1840s New York; approximately 200 pages; the most accessible and the shortest of James's major novels; the stage adaptation The Heiress (1947, film 1949) is excellent and captures the novel's essential conflict - Buy
The Portrait of a Lady
OptionalHenry James·1881·James's first major novel and the natural next step after Washington Square — Isabel Archer's journey from American freedom to European imprisonment; longer and more complex but in the same tradition of a young American woman whose intelligence and goodness make her vulnerable to exploitation - Buy
The Turn of the Screw
OptionalHenry James·1898·A governess at an English country house who believes she is protecting her charges from malevolent ghosts — whether the ghosts are real or whether the governess is psychologically disturbed is deliberately left ambiguous; under 100 pages; the closest James comes to Gothic horror and one of the most influential ambiguous ghost stories in English
Washington Square — Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called Washington Square?
Washington Square refers to the neighborhood in lower Manhattan where the novel is set — Washington Square was, in the 1840s when the novel takes place, a desirable residential address for New York's respectable professional class. The Sloper family home on Washington Square is the novel's primary setting, and the neighborhood's character — old-money respectability, conservative social values, proper manners — is inseparable from the novel's themes. The title identifies the novel with its social world in the same way that Middlemarch identifies Eliot's novel with its provincial English setting.
Does Catherine's father love her?
Dr. Sloper's relationship with Catherine is one of the most devastating portraits of a particular kind of parental cruelty in English fiction. He does not dislike her — he is not cruel in any obvious way — but he cannot forgive her for not being the brilliant, beautiful child he might have had; her mother died in childbirth and left him a daughter who is, in his eyes, ordinary. His intelligence and wit are used throughout the novel as instruments of contempt for Catherine's plainness and simplicity, and his manipulation of her in the matter of Morris Townsend is the most devastating expression of this contempt. Whether this constitutes love in any meaningful sense is one of the questions the novel asks.
Should I read Washington Square or The Portrait of a Lady first?
Washington Square first — it is much shorter and more direct, and it establishes the Jamesian situation (an intelligent young woman placed in the care of people who wish to control her) in its simplest and most accessible form. The Portrait of a Lady then develops the same situation at far greater length, in more complex social settings, and with a more fully realized heroine. Reading them in order shows the development of James's central preoccupation.
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