Plot Summary
Dr. Austin Sloper, a wealthy and highly successful physician, lives in Washington Square, New York, with his only surviving child, Catherine. Catherine is a sweet-natured young woman who is a great disappointment to her father, being physically plain and, he believes, dull in terms of personality and intellect. Sloper's beloved wife died a week after giving birth to Catherine. A three-year-old son had died two years earlier. His sister, Lavinia Penniman, a meddlesome and perverse woman, is the only other member of the doctor's household.
One day, Catherine meets the charming Morris Townsend at a party and is powerfully drawn to him. Morris courts Catherine, aided by Mrs. Penniman, who loves melodrama. Dr. Sloper strongly disapproves, believing him to be after Catherine's money alone. When Catherine and Morris announce their engagement, he looks into Morris's background by visiting his sister and learns that he is a parasitic spendthrift. The doctor forbids his daughter to marry Townsend, whom he considers to be a 'selfish idler' and Catherine cannot bring herself to choose between loyalty to her father and devotion to her fiancé.
Dr. Sloper understands Catherine's predicament and pities her a little, but also finds an urbane entertainment in the situation. In an effort to resolve the matter, he tells her that he will disinherit her if she marries Morris; he then takes her on a twelve month grand tour of Europe. During their time abroad, he mentions Catherine's engagement only twice: once while they are alone together in the Alps, and again on the eve of their return voyage. On both occasions, Catherine holds firm in her determination to marry. After she refuses for a second time to give Morris up, Sloper sarcastically compares her to a sheep fattened up for slaughter. With this, he finally goes too far: Catherine recognizes his contempt, withdraws from him, and prepares to bestow all her love and loyalty on Morris.
Upon her return, however, Morris, whom aunt Lavinia has now, at least emotionally, virtually adopted as her son, breaks off the relationship when Catherine convinces him that her father will never relent. Catherine, devastated, eventually recovers her equanimity but is never able to forget the injury. Many years pass; Catherine refuses two respectable offers of marriage and grows into a middle-aged spinster. Dr. Sloper finally dies and leaves her a sharply reduced income in his will out of fear that Townsend will reappear. In fact, Morris – now fat, balding, cold-eyed, but still somewhat attractive – does eventually pay a call on Catherine, hoping to reconcile; but she calmly rebuffs his overtures. In the last sentence, James tells us that "Catherine,... picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it again — for life, as it were."
Read more about this topic: Washington Square (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)