Washington SquareWordsworth Editions, 2001 - 154 pages 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 1870's, 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. |
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Contents
Section 1 | 3 |
Section 2 | 6 |
Section 3 | 20 |
Section 4 | 42 |
Section 5 | 54 |
Section 6 | 67 |
Section 7 | 75 |
Section 8 | 80 |
Section 11 | 99 |
Section 12 | 108 |
Section 13 | 111 |
Section 14 | 119 |
Section 15 | 124 |
Section 16 | 135 |
Section 17 | 146 |
Section 18 | 153 |