Washington Square Themes

Throughout Henry James’s 1880 novel Washington Square, 22-year-old heiress Catherine Sloper equates her welfare and happiness with pleasing her father, the clever, disdainful Dr. Sloper: “She was extremely fond of her father and very much afraid of him […] Her deepest desire was to please him, and her conception of happiness was to know that she had succeeded in pleasing him.” This same subservience characterizes Catherine’s relationships with her aunt, Lavinia Penniman…

Washington Square is a story characterized by loss from its first pages. Dr. Sloper, an acclaimed physician, suffers the stigma of his young son’s death and later that of his beloved wife following the birth of his daughter, Catherine. Dr. Sloper’s grief has devastating effects on his relationship with Catherine, who idolizes her father despite his aloofness; it stunts her potential for a healthy marriage and ultimately leads to her own crushing disillusionment…

Henry James presents Dr. Austin Sloper’s character as adhering to “an idea of the beauty of reason.” This guiding principle “set a limit to his recognition […] of Catherine’s possibilities,” and, as the novel goes on to show, of Morris Townsend’s potential as Catherine’s suitor. Lavinia Penniman, Dr. Sloper’s sister and Catherine’s guardian, is presented as likewise hobbled by devotion to a particular worldview, although hers is romantic and sentimental rather…

From the time Catherine Sloper is born, her sex is a letdown to her father, Dr. Sloper, and her upbringing is marked by tacit—and sometimes explicit—rejection due to her failure to live up to rigid expectations of femininity. Because Catherine is not as beautiful and clever as socially successful women are supposed to be, Dr. Sloper assumes that Catherine’s inheritance is the only thing that would attract a suitor, and this assumption poisons her…