Book Review: Washington Square by Henry James

I’m so glad I now have this in my personal library. I originally read this novel for a college course, and I really wanted to reread it because I would find myself thinking of it from time to time. For some reason, I remembered it as a novella rather than a full novel, perhaps because I originally read it on kindle, but it’s still pretty short and sweet. 

I was actually worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this reread at first, because it took me a while to get accustomed to James’ writing. This might be because the first few chapters are dedicated to character descriptions, and James saturates these chapters with the most conversational and ironical, facetious tone of the book. They are well-written chapters that acquire a unique blend of unreliability and honesty, but I wasn’t recognizing what I had so adored in the book the last time I read it. I recently found out that Henry James’ own view of Catherine evolved over the course of writing, that he started the book with a dislike for his heroine, but ended with more respect for her. And you can tell in the writing. It starts off more mean-spirited, more satirical, and ends with more reverence.

As the novel progressed, I realized why this book had stuck with me over the years. As a character study and an exploration of the questions Cynthia Ozick poses in the introduction, “Is it always right to be right? Will a wrong motive always do harm?,” it is exquisite. Was Catherine’s potential for happiness in marriage stolen from her, or was she saved from a lifetime of unhappiness by her father’s interference? The question is never answered, and the ending of the novel is satisfying and unsatisfying at once. 

I genuinely love how these well-drawn, complex characters interact. The moral, plain, stalwart Catherine; the ever-ironical father; and the histrionic, sentimental aunt perfectly play into and enhance the difficult situation of determining if a suitor is genuine or a gold digger (and can he be both?). James wrote Morris so incredibly well, fully intending for his audience to be torn as to whether he’s a good match for Catherine. James reveals just enough and leaves just enough up for interpretation for these characters and their motivations to be quite thought-provoking.

I think I found the characters even slightly more nuanced upon the second read. On the first read, I thought Morris was more concerned with his own image and was solely in it for the inheritance, but this read I saw a bit more affection for Catherine, even if it was still more of an afterthought. And I was more sympathetic to the father this time around, even though he is not as generous towards Catherine as he should be.  

I will say that I bought a used version off of Thriftbooks, and the previous owner was a messy and obvious annotator, and that rather affected my reading experience. It was rather annoying, so I might pick up an unannotated version and fill it up with my own annotations to annoy the next owner after me. 

Anyways, this is such a solid classic. Not quite a favorite of all time for me, but definitely up there.