num_pages: 176
description: Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell. Professor of English Literature. University of Keele. Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870s, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper, a celebrated physician, and his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression.
language: English
title: Washington Square
titlecomplete: Washington Square (Wordsworth Classics)
characters: Catherine Sloper, Morris Townsend, Dr. Sloper
genres: Literature, American, Classics, Novels, Classic Literature, 19th Century, New York, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance
ratings_count: 22685
places: New York City, New York, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York
publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd