The Oxford Bookworms Library: Stage 4: 1,400 Headwords: Washington Square

by TriciaHedge (Contributor), HenryJames (Author), JenniferBassett (Contributor), KieranMcGovern (Contributor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $4.57

• Used

  Paperback
  1970

  $3.42

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $7.07

  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.