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Washington Square: A Novella for All Seasons1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Leslie Fishbein
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Extract

Henry James's novella Washington Square (1880) is very much a novel of place and proved readily adaptable to the stage precisely because it was so limited in locale. Whereas Henri Balzac's similar tale Eugénie Grandet is named in honor of its heroine, James's work is designated by the neighborhood in which most of its action takes place. One could argue that the house in which Catherine Sloper's ill-fated courtship takes place is virtually a character in the novella, seducing the opportunist Morris Townsend more effectively than Catherine herself ever could (Figure 1).

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 25 , October 2000 , pp. 513 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

NOTES

2. Fanu, Mark Le, Introduction to Henry James, Washington Square (1880; rept. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), xxviiGoogle Scholar (all references to the text of the novella are to this edition); and Donoghue, Denis, “The Jamesian House of Fiction,” in Greenwich Village: Culture and Counterculture, ed. Beard, Rick and Berlowitz, Leslie Cohen (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press for the Museum of the City of New York, 1993), 306Google Scholar.

3. Ruth, and Goetz, Augustus, The Heiress, Acting Edition (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948)Google Scholar; The Heiress (1949), directed by William Wyler, Paramount, starring Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, and Ralph Richardson.

4. Goetz, , The Heiress [4]Google Scholar.

5. James, , Washington Square, 14–16, 69–70, 82–84, 127–32Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 14.

7. Goetz, , The Heiress, 5Google Scholar.

8. James, , Washington Square, 52Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., 185–86.

10. Ibid., 196.

11. Goetz, , The Heiress, 5, 10, 14–15, 57, 89–90Google Scholar.

12. Washington Square (1997), directed by Agnieszka Holland, Walt Disney Productions, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ben Chaplin, and Albert Finney; and James, , Washington Square, 4Google Scholar.

13. James, , Washington Square, 4Google Scholar.

14. Ibid., 4.

15. Donoghue, , “Jamesian House,” 306–7Google Scholar.

16. Please note that Donoghue spells the word “honorable” in its American orthography, even when quoting verbatim from Washington Square, whereas James himself used the British spelling, “honourable.”

17. James, , Washington Square, 24–25Google Scholar.

18. Ibid., 134.

19. Ibid., 145.

20. Ibid., 174.

21. Ibid., 1.

22. Menand, Louis, “Not Getting the Lesson of the Master,” New York Review of Books 44 (4 12 1997): 19Google Scholar.

23. James, , Washington Square, 8Google Scholar.

24. Ibid., 9.

25. Ibid., 10–11.

26. Ibid., 172–73.

27. Goetz, , The Heiress, 75–79Google Scholar.

28. James, , Washington Square, 82–84, 133–34, 147–54Google Scholar.

29. Donald Hall, Afterword, James, Henry, Washington Square (1881; rept. New York: Signet Classic/New American Library, 1964), 189Google Scholar.

30. James, , Washington Square, 180Google Scholar.

31. Ibid., 14.

32. Ibid., 180.

33. Ibid., 196.