Book Review: Washington Square by Henry James
This year Jessica and I decided to take a new approach to New Year’s resolutions. Rather than rashly over-promise we made a list of six things to do, see, visit, read, or watch over the course of 2016. This resulted in a nicely eclectic collection of films, places, restaurants and, of course, books.
My set of six books are a mixture of those I’ve claimed to have already finished (Gulliver’s Travels), others I’ve been meaning to read for a long time (Arthur and George by Julian Barnes), or newer authors who I’d shamefully not yet enjoyed (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Neel Mukherjee). The fourth book that I’ve read from this set fits neatly between the first two categories and is Washington Square by Henry James.
Washington Square is a simple story. Even for those who haven’t read it I’ll spoil nothing by revealing it is about a woman who nearly gets engaged. Actually that is the only plot point of any note. Safe to say this isn’t a book about what happens.
It was published in 1880 but is set in an earlier part of that century when New York didn’t stretch much beyond Lower Manhattan. James’ summons a world that is at once familiar and distant. It also a world that feels claustrophobically small. This is not the brash metropolis of skyscrapers and robber barons but largish town perched on an edge of an extremely large, and relatively unexplored, continent. This is a New York still negotiating its inherent newness with its inherited colonial European past.
The enclosed nature of Washington Square is nowhere more apparent than in the home of its heroine Catherine Sloper. She is the only daughter of a successful physician and a “Great Man of New York”. Dr Sloper is reputed to be a man of formidable talents but those talents do not unfortunately extend to any feelings of paternal warmth towards his daughter. Catherine, for her part, considers her father as a deity, never to be doubted let alone contradicted. She appears placidly comfortable in this state up until the very moment she meets an enigmatic Mr. Townsend; he rudely awakens her to the possibility of a very different kind of affection altogether. This is the starting point from which James weaves his narrative.
I hadn’t read any of James’ novels before now (something I unfairly blame on the fact he counted as “non-English” and was consequently left off my undergraduate syllabus) but I had read a lot about him. More specifically I’d read a lot about his style. From the off it would very difficult to ever be unconscious of the fact you are reading Henry James. His sentences, easy to pastiche, difficult to better, are never knowingly undersold with regards to sub-clauses. Furthermore, his aversion to terminal punctuation means that no single statement is ever unduly certain, no one thought is left unqualified, or unelaborated, or under examined. It is as distinctive as it is masterful (and, as demonstrated here, difficult to mimic with any real success…)
What is particularly impressive is the way in which he employs this mastery to convene such profound inarticulacy. Catherine is largely characterised by her inability to express what she is feeling. Through her, James’s style becomes a way of never quite completing a thought or having the confidence to commit to a position. She reverts to a form of stubbornness born of an inability to find the words, or even the thoughts, that would meaningfully challenge her father’s authority. This makes her a curiously frustrating lens, consistently disappointing the reader through failing to have agency in her own story.
Against this backdrop of inactivity none of the supporting cast emerge well. Dr. Sloper is sufficiently impressed with himself that he sees no reason to concede any ground to his daughter’s happiness. Aunt Lavinia plays the role of agitator-in-chief largely in order to vicariously alleviate the stifling boredom of her existence. The result is a woman whose actions are so transparently self-interested its takes James’ most overwrought constructions to allow her to convince herself she’s doing the right thing. This conviction is never in any danger of extending itself to the reader.
The final member of the ensemble is potential fiance Morris Townsend. He is an almost instantly forgettable figure whose sole function is to personify “the Cad”. Through the eyes of Catherine much is made of his looks and his “brilliance”. In another novel he might go on to become Gatsby but in this one, James is not interested in granting him that sophistication. Here he is merely the grist in the Sloper family mill that allow each of them accentuate the worst in each other.
That actually makes the novel sound significantly more dramatic than it ever is. If there is one overriding sentiment it is not melodrama but a suffocating sensation of being jilted and suppressed. Not in a showy, Anne Hathaway sense of jilted, but just enough to emotionally retard Catherine even further.
It is never wise to second guess what a writer is trying to achieve. However, if I was forced to speculate I’d say James’s aim was to demonstrate how outwardly respectable people can be utterly vile to one another in private. One is left with the distinct sense this is because of, rather than in spite of, the stultifying mannered fashion in which they conduct themselves. Finally, I imagine he enjoyed demonstrating just how cleverly he could achieve that frustrating closeted feeling through sheer weight of artfully deployed syntax.
I enjoyed Washington Square and I enjoyed James’ writing. I don’t think I enjoyed it enough to counteract the blithe distaste that I felt for the characters and the world he summoned. For his ability to craft a sentence I will readily read more but I don’t know that James will automatically make the cut for the already competitive “7 for 2017”. I’d love to know who disagrees.
Next Time: In Pursuit of Development by Professor Ian Goldin
