Washington Square

“The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the doctor built himself a handsome, modern wide-fronted house, with a balcony before the drawing room windows, and flight of white marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble.”

The Washington Square residence begins as a symbol of Dr. Sloper’s quiet, established financial and social stability. When Catherine retains her residence there following her father’s death, the residence reflects her stoic, immovable position as to how to live out her remaining years.

“He had seen all the principal actors—he had been to all the best theatres in London and Paris. But the actors were always like the authors—they always exaggerated. He likes everything to be natural.”

This description of Townsend’s experiences with theater foreshadows his ability to act a part when it is to his benefit. Though Townsend is willing to use theatrical exaggeration when it suits him, he has a natural ability to make others believe in him, even while he compiles a growing history of taking advantage of those who show such belief.

“If she had been told she was in love, she would have been a good deal surprised; for she had an idea that love was an eager and exacting passion, and her own heart was filled in these days with the impulse of self-effacement and sacrifice.”

Catherine’s confusion concerning love stems in part from her being a protégé of Mrs. Penniman, her primary maternal influence and someone who understands love as a disturbingly passionate sentiment. Catherine’s feelings here as she is falling in love foreshadow her willingness to transfer the loyalty and deference she initially feels for her father onto Townsend.

“Mrs. Penniman delighted of all things in a drama, and she flattered herself a drama would now be enacted. Combining as she did the zeal of the prompter with the impatience of the spectator, she had long since done her utmost to pull up the curtain.”

The novel’s sense of being an old-fashioned comedy of manners derives from the limited settings and characters and is augmented by Mrs. Penniman’s character. She is at her most joyous—and most comical—when participating in what she sees as a romantic drama in which she pictures herself as director, central character, and riveted spectator in turn.

“The principal thing that we know about him is that he has led a life of dissipation and has spent a fortune of his own in doing so.”

Pressed by Catherine to give reasons for his disapproval of Townsend, Dr. Sloper shows a bluntness that is characteristic of his speech to Catherine when he is not being cuttingly ironic. Dr. Sloper proves correct in his judgment of Townsend; however, he lacks compassion for Catherine’s predicament. The harshness of her father’s judgments impedes Catherine’s ability to see Townsend for who he is.

“I am glad she is not on my side. The day Lavinia gets into your boat it capsizes.”

Dr. Sloper’s pithy remark about his sister, Mrs. Penniman, reveals both his dry humor and his arrogance. He dismisses the beliefs and concerns of his daughter and sister, and he maintains authority in his household. The only character who lives up to his standards is his beautiful and intelligent wife, who is dead.

“She only had an idea that if she should be very good, the situation would in some mysterious manner improve. To be good she must be patient, outwardly submissive, abstain from judging her father too harshly, and from committing any act of open defiance.”

The first important dilemma of Catherine’s life starts to become clear. Because her father disapproves of her engagement, Catherine does not know how to remain true to both her father and her beloved. The limitations in Catherine’s education and experience, and the resulting inability to make autonomous choices, show in her failure to act. She hopes that being as dutiful as possible to all involved will somehow make everything right.

“‘If you succumb to the dread of your father’s wrath,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what will become of us.’”

This speech emphasizes Mrs. Penniman’s penchant for drama. The overwrought diction concerning a “father’s wrath” overstates the stakes, while her statement that she does not know what will become of us shows how deeply embroiled she feels in the romantic drama, as if her position or livelihood depends upon its resolution.

“Have you no faith in my wisdom, in my tenderness, in my solicitude for your future?”

Catherine is unwilling to break off the engagement with Townsend despite Dr. Sloper’s wishes. This passage marks a turning point in the novel. The doctor becomes increasingly manipulative of Catherine throughout the rest of the narrative, playing on her fidelity. As a result, he begins to lose some of the credibility that he earned by correctly unmasking Townsend’s character.

“This was more than the poor girl could bear; her tears overflowed, and she moved toward her grimly consistent parent with a pitiful cry. Her hands were raised in supplication, but he sternly evaded this appeal. Instead of letting her sob out her misery on his shoulder, he simply took her by the arm and directed her course across the threshold closing the door gently but firmly behind her.”

Dr. Sloper is so focused on exacting from Catherine the deference she always showed that he begins to act a role. He refuses to comfort her to increase her guilt and puts further pressure on her to give in, without apparent regard for the additional pain he is causing. If she does not give up Townsend, he will no longer show her parental caring and love.

“‘I can’t understand you,’ Mrs. Penniman cried, ‘you should stay in bed for three days.’”

After Catherine has the difficult interview with her father in which she refuses to give up her engagement, Mrs. Penniman desires that she make a dramatic scene. Mrs. Penniman’s advice further characterizes her as entirely over-dramatic, and it shows that the closest person Catherine has to a maternal figure is ill-suited to that role.

“He told me to tell you—to tell you very distinctly, and distinctly from himself—that if I marry without his consent, I shall not inherit a penny of his fortune.”

This message, which Catherine relays from Dr. Sloper to Townsend, shows both Catherine’s continuing sense of duty to her father—she relays the message immediately to Townsend as her father wishes—and signals to Townsend that the struggle over Catherine continues. It also emphasizes Catherine’s lack of agency in this struggle: The message comes directly from the doctor to the suitor, as if Catherine were not even involved.

“The two things are extremely mixed up and the mixture is extremely odd. It will produce some third element, and that’s what I’m waiting to see.”

Dr. Sloper’s background as a physician and man of science begins to overwhelm his sense of caring or love for his daughter. He sees the conflicting elements of Catherine’s respect for him and love for Townsend as mixing and churning in her as if she were a test tube. His willingness to stand by like a scientist awaiting the result highlights Catherine’s objectification.

“Her father’s displeasure had cost the girl, as we know, a great deal of deep-welling sorrow—sorrow of the purest and most generous kind, without a touch of resentment or rancor; but for the first time, after he had dismissed with such contemptuous brevity her apology for being a charge upon him, there was a spark of anger in her grief.”

When Dr. Sloper dismisses Catherine’s suggestion that she should not live with him while continuing to defy his wishes, he begins to break down her unquestioning fidelity to and respect for him. While her anger and sense of autonomy begin to show, they come at the cost of losing a valued part of her relationship with her father, a frequent trope in coming-of-age literature.

“If he marries her, and she comes into Austin’s money, they may get on. He will be an idle, amiable, selfish, and, doubtless, tolerably good-natured fellow. But if she doesn’t get the money, and he finds himself tied to her, heaven have mercy on her!”

Mrs. Almond serves as a voice of reason to counter Dr. Sloper, Mrs. Penniman, and even Catherine. Here, she contemplates the potentially tolerable versus the completely ruinous consequences of Catherine marrying Townsend, a contemplation Dr. Sloper himself never makes because he is too enmeshed in asserting his authority.

“There was a sore spot in her heart that his own words had made when once she spoke to him as she thought honor prompted; she would try to please him as far as she could, but she would never speak that way again. She read her lover’s letters in secret.”

Catherine realizes that Dr. Sloper broke the trust she once had in him; his lack of compassion for her diminishes her sense of loyalty. As a result, when she receives letters from Townsend while she is in Europe, she feels no need to share their contents with her father. Through his efforts to break her from Townsend, Dr. Sloper alienated Catherine from himself.

“He has found some employment. It’s beautiful news, and he told me to tell you as soon as you arrive. He has gone into partnership with a commission merchant. It was all settled, quite suddenly, a week ago.”

Mrs. Penniman’s speech upon Catherine’s return from Europe momentarily buoys Catherine, who would love for Townsend to prove Dr. Sloper wrong in believing him an idler. However, the timing of the new position, entered into a week before Catherine and Dr. Sloper’s return, foreshadows that it is a sham concocted by Townsend to impress Catherine and her father.

“He can’t help it. We can’t govern our affections. Do I govern mine? Mightn’t he say that to me? It’s because he is so fond of my mother, whom we lost so long ago. She was beautiful, and very, very brilliant; he is always thinking of her. I am not at all like her; Aunt Penniman has told me that.”

Catherine tells Townsend that her father is not fond of her. Dr. Sloper is certainly disappointed that Catherine was not born male, and the reader knows that the doctor’s wife is the only woman he ever thought notably intelligent. Catherine seems resigned that he will never love her the way she wishes, which perhaps explains why she is attracted to Townsend.

“Mr. Townsend has been a good deal in the house; there is something in the house that tells me so. We doctors, you know, end by acquiring fine perceptions, and it is impressed upon my sensorium that he has sat in these chairs, in a very easy attitude, and warmed himself at that fire.”

Dr. Sloper shows his belief in his infallible discernment, a belief he associates with his scientific training and long experience. While Dr. Sloper is correct about Townsend having made himself comfortable in the doctor’s house, his self-assurance in assessing people eventually harms his relationship with Catherine.

“Catherine would have made a wife of the old-fashioned pattern—regarding reasons as favors and windfalls, but no more expecting one every day than she would have expected a bouquet of camellias.”

Catherine was raised by Dr. Sloper to be faithful and obedient, but he failed to train or enable her to make or trust her own decisions. Thus, when faced with a situation where duties pull her in different directions, Catherine breaks down. Having relied on her father rather than her own reason, Catherine wishes to simply transfer this faith to Townsend.

“‘I am not in any trouble whatever, and do not need any help,’ said Catherine, fibbing roundly, and proving thereby that not only our faults but our involuntary misfortunes, tend to corrupt our morals.”

The theme of dishonesty that suffuses the novel surfaces here. As Townsend becomes increasingly involved with Catherine, she and Dr. Sloper become less honest and forthright with each other, putting a strain on their relationship that eventually breaks it. Catherine’s statement here to Mrs. Penniman shows that her penchant for dishonesty when it comes to Townsend is not limited to her conversations with her father.

“You can depend upon it, he has not burnt his ships; he has kept one to come back in. When I am dead, he will set sail again, and then she will marry him.”

Dr. Sloper’s initial scientific interest in seeing how things play out between Catherine and Townsend becomes an obsession. He wants to keep Townsend away from his money even after his death. After making this statement, Dr. Sloper revises his will to significantly reduce Catherine’s inheritance. Catherine, having given up expecting anything from him, accepts this as a matter of course.

“She had had a great shock; it was as if the gulf of the past had suddenly opened, and a spectral figure had risen out of it. There were some things she believed she had got over, some feelings that she thought of as dead; but apparently there was a certain vitality in them still.”

Townsend’s reappearance at the end of the novel awakens feelings Catherine buried. She long ago decided she would not put her love in anyone’s hands, either because she does not want to be hurt or because she cannot allow herself to trust another man. Either way, Townsend’s return stirs memories of her old self that she quickly quells.