Henry James: Novels 1881–1886

Written in London and Italy between 1879 and 1885, these novels portray American women confronting crises of independence and possession. Studies in the exercise of power that marks relations between sexes, classes, and cultures, they show James's special solicitude for the young heroines who occupy the center of his fictional world. Washington Square (1880) examines the life of Catherine Sloper, a plain, sweet young woman who lives imprisoned by the selfishness of those close to her: her lover, who cares only for her fortune; her aunt, who meddles for the sake of romantic intrigue; and her protective father, who repays her adoration with irony and wit. Set in the New York of the 1840s, Washington Square evokes the still-intimate city of James's childhood while presenting a frightening moral lesson in the human consequences of manipulation and indifference.

William T. Stafford is professor of English at Purdue University