Reading the Classics discussion

Again combining 2 weeks (this time the final 2): let's finish this one up. A few of us already have, but it would be nice to reach the end and share closing thoughts.

Some of my thoughts on Sloper:

In Washington Square, Henry James uses physical spaces to depict psychological spaces and emotional compartmentalization. The parlor is Catherine’s space and her struggle with Townsend happens in the parlor doorway. Thus, “All her being, for the moment, centred in the wish to keep him in the room.” In the doorway, Catherine struggles to hold on to Townsend and his promises of love and marriage but “he managed to get away and to close the door behind him” (Chapter 29). Just as her father closed the door to his study on her, another door to communion, empathy, sympathy, and love closed to Catherine.

Among other things, Washington Square is a critique of applying intellectual reasoning to the exclusion of emotional considerations. Sloper compartmentalizes his space, life, thoughts, and relationships. Sloper uses emotionless observations, inductions, inferences, and analysis to reduce individuals to character types. Sloper believes being provably right makes him victorious over and morally superior to his opponents, thus subverting morality. And he believes this victory gives him the right to gloat over and mercilessly humiliate his opponents/victims, including Catherine whom “he almost never addressed … save in the ironical form” (Chapter 4). Thus, Sloper uses reasoning and irony to alienate, control, and victimize his daughter whom he should protect, advise, respect, and love.

However, removing emotions from relationships has consequences. According to the narrator: “We know that [Catherine] had been deeply and incurably wounded, but the Doctor had no means of knowing it … it was his punishment that he never knew—his punishment, I mean, for the abuse of sarcasm in his relations with his daughter” (Chapter 32). In other words, Sloper’s punishment for treating his daughter like a science experiment, refusing to bond with her, and withholding love, compassion, sympathy, empathy, and other wholesome emotions from her is that he never got to know or meaningfully share his life with her. Sloper does not know Catherine’s thoughts and emotions because she does not trust him enough to share them; therefore, he cannot know her. Sloper never knew what he was missing or that his intellectual victories were hollow.

Source: James, Henry. Washington Square Critical Edition. Cambridge World Classics. Kindle Edition.

Some of my thoughts on Catherine:

Among other things, Washington Square is about Catherine Sloper’s identity formation. When Catherine was a child, she practically worshiped her intelligent but controlling father and spent her youth trying but failing to please him. Catherine was enthralled by her father and internalized his opinions about what she is and is not capable of and who she is. Thus, Catherine remained naïve, child-like, and dependent on her father into her early twenties without forming her own independent identity.

Eventually, Catherine begins to establish her identity, first by choosing the design of her own clothes and then by choosing a mate. Catherine quickly became enthralled by Townsend’s beautiful body and flattering attention. After she commits her heart and hand, Catherine shockingly discovers that her father will not support her decision. For Catherine, “her father's words had such an authority for her that her very thoughts were capable of obeying him. There was a dreadful ugliness in it, which seemed to glare at her through the interposing medium of her own feebler reason” (Chapter 18). Catherine is slowly becoming aware that her father suffocates her ability to think and form her own identity.

Catherine decides to diverge from the identity and life that her father has dictated for her. “She had an entirely new feeling, which may be described as a state of expectant suspense about her own actions. She watched herself as she would have watched another person, and wondered what she would do. It was as if this other person, who was both herself and not herself, had suddenly sprung into being, inspiring her with a natural curiosity as to the performance of untested functions” (Chapter 15). Catherine decides to create her own identity and choose her own fate. This decision forms the novel’s chief conflict. This battle of wills is not about whether or not Catherine will marry Townsend, but whether or not Catherine will succeed in forging her own identity and life choices in spite of her father’s will, power, and control, and within the narrow moral strictures of her society.

Catherine loses Townsend but wins her all-important power struggle. The narrator confirms, “Catherine, in growing older, had become a person to be reckoned with” (Chapter 34). But it takes a last meeting with Townsend for Catherine to realize the extent of her victory. Catherine tells Townsend she did not marry because she had “nothing to gain" through marriage (Chapter 35). In that moment, Catherine realizes the truth: that by not marrying she gained control of her life and the power to be her true self.

Source: James, Henry. Washington Square Critical Edition. Cambridge World Classics. Kindle Edition.