Washington Square by Henry James
Washington Square is a very tight story pulled out like taffy to 175 pages. And every page, and every delay in the ever-prolonged resolution is wonderful. The situation is that Catherine, the twenty or so year-old, plain and dull daughter of the eminent Dr. Austin Sloper, has attracted a suitor. Morris Townsend is handsome but poor and unemployed. Catherine has money: $10,000 a year, willed to her by her mother when her mother died following Catherine’s birth. But there’s even more money coming to her, potentially, from her father, who has a successful medical practice. When her father dies, Catherine will receive an additional, nearly, $20,000 a year.
A stage play made from Washington Square was called The Heiress. It was a hit when it premiered on Broadway in 1947 and then became the basis for a movie in 1949 with Olivia de Haviland, Montgomery Clift and Ralph Richardson. Olivia de Haviland won an Oscar for her performance as Catherine.
Catherine is sure that Morris’ love is true. Dr. Sloper is convinced he’s a mercenary. He refuses to bless the couple and promises to re-write his will if Catherine marries Morris Townsend leaving his money to hospitals and clinics instead of his daughter. Catherine refuses to give up Morris and has a vague idea that if she waits long enough, or perhaps goes ahead and marries him, that eventually her father will come around. Thus, a stalemate is set 30 pages into the novel that lasts until nearly the end. The Dr. becomes ever-more certain of Morris’ unworthiness and ever-more clear to both Catherine and Morris that he will never change his mind and never leave his money to their union. Catherine and Morris continue to believe that he must at last relent. Catherine is sure that her father is wrong about Morris and will eventually see him for the fine person she believes he is, but she’s pretty vague about what strategy will bring about this change in her father’s attitude.
James does a fine job of keeping the truth about Morris ambiguous. Morris is completely honest about his own lack of money and prospects. He’s supposedly looking for employment but not finding the right position. That the Dr. can’t believe that Morris might truthfully love his daughter causes him to say cruel things about her, to other characters and even to her face. Is Catherine deluded by Morris’ good looks and speech and charm? Is Dr. Sloper prejudiced against him, perhaps by those same qualities? Is Catherine naive and desperate? Is Dr. Sloper unconsciously punishing his daughter for his disappointment that she fails to meet the high standard of beauty and intelligence set by his beloved, long-dead wife?
Dr. Sloper is sure he merely sees the truth. He postures himself as a man of science: objective, realist, unsentimental. In this he contrasts with the other woman in the house on Washington Square, his sister, and Catherine’s aunt, Lavinia Penniman. Lavinia is a childless widow that her brother took in after her husband’s death. Lavinia is a romantic. She is excited by and encourages Catherine’s love affair, and the more complications and clandestine meetings and possible dramatic outcomes the better. Dr. Sloper has another sister, a Mrs. Almond, more level-headed than Lavinia, but not as hard-headed as her brother.
The other significant character, with a small but crucial part, is Morris’ sister, Mrs. Montgomery. She’s a young widow, with five children. Dr. Sloper arranges a meeting with her to hear what she has to say about her brother. Though she is coy (she mostly lets Dr. Sloper ask accusing questions and then demures to answer) it is here that James finally lets it slip that Morris Townsend really is a selfish idler. Morris had a small fortune of his own, all spent on traveling about the world, which left him cultured and interesting but broke. Now he lives off of his sister. Her final words to Dr. Sloper as he leaves her house seals the deal, “Don’t let her marry him!” (p. 133, but the page number is misleading. I read an edition that publishes Washington Square with James’ novella Daisy Miller which comes first. Washington Square begins on page 65, so page 133 is really page 68 of the novel, or a little shy of the mid-point.)
The situation continues to draw out. It’s all very fun. Aunt Lavinia meddles. The Dr. decides to take Catherine to Europe for six months, hoping that she will forget Morris, or he, her, while they’re away. But she doesn’t, and furthermore, she learns a hard truth of her father. “He is not very fond of me!” she acknowledges to Morris when they are back together in New York (p. 190). That realization releases Catherine from the fear that she will lose her father’s affection if she marries Morris, so now she’s ready to defy her unloving father and marry Morris. But simultaneously, the same realization confirms to Morris that they will certainly lose Dr. Sloper’s fortune if they marry. And thus, at last, he gives up his pursuit and breaks off the engagement. Here too, though, there is some ambiguity, as he colors his leaving Catherine as not wanting to cause a permanent rupture between her and her father.
The final twenty pages of the story leap ahead by twenty years. (The main action takes place in 1850, so this is now 1870.) James begins chapter 32 (the chapters are very short) with the felicitous line, “Our story has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it approaches its termination it must take a long stride” (p. 220). Catherine is now in her 40s. The doctor is near 70. Catherine has had a couple of possible suitors, both of which she declined. And then they hear word that Morris Townsend is back in town, now “fat and bald” (p. 227) and still without a fortune. Catherine has no interest in re-connecting with him, or even seeing him, but Dr. Sloper nevertheless asks her to promise him she won’t marry him after he dies. She refuses to promise, asserting her right to make her own decisions. Dr. Sloper dies a year later and he has indeed removed his daughter from his will.
But Catherine still has her mother’s money, which has also grown over the prior twenty years, and Aunt Lavinia continues to meddle. Without asking Catherine she invites Morris Townsend to the house. Catherine condescends to see him. “He was forty-five years old, and his figure was not that of the straight, slim young man she remembered. But it was a very fine person, and a fair and lustrous bread, spreading itself upon a well-presented chest, contributed to its effect. After a moment Catherine recognized the upper half of the face, which, though her visitor’s clustering locks had grown thin, was still remarkably handsome” (p. 237). He proposes that now they can resume their friendship, intimating that maybe they might even marry. She refuses his friendship and sends him away, accepting her unmarried life.
In the movie version this last twenty years is reduced to five or six so that Montgomery Clift can return as the older Morris Townsend looking much the same, aged only by the addition of a small mustache.
James published Washington Square in 1880, followed the next year by The Portrait of a Lady (both serialized in magazines before coming out as books). The central dilemma is similar in both, a woman with money is set upon by a charming but unscrupulous fortune-hunter. In The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer marries her Gabriel Osmond. In Washington Square, Catherine Sloper is jilted by Morris Townsend and then spurns him twenty years later. In both novels there are hardly any good models of marriage, many widows and widowers, or never-married, or badly-married characters.
These were the final novels of James’ early period. Of his middle period I’ve read The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw. Of his final period, I’ve read only The Ambassadors, and that was thirty years ago, so there are many pleasures still to come.