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.
| ISBN: | 9781840224276 |
| Publication date: | 5th August 2001 |
| Author: | Henry James |
| Publisher: | Wordsworth Editions an imprint of Wordsworth Editions Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 176 pages |
| Series: | Wordsworth Classics |
| Genres: |
Classic fiction: general and literary |