Relationship of Washington Square to Henry Jamess Other Novels :: Washington Square Henry James

Relationship of capital letter Square to Henry Jamess separate NovelsAccording to Bette Howland in Washington Square, the Family Plot, the idea that Henry James should feed Washington Square come in of his New York Edition, is a holdting mockery in that like Dr. Sloper in the novel, James disinherited his heroine and cut her out of his will (1). Although James might have wished us to treat Washington Square as an orphan, an outcast, a black sheep as compared with its better relatives, Howlands render quite clearly establishes a familial link between this and Jamess other, more famous works. As Howland says, Not only is Washington Square, though disowned, a member of the family--it is the original, the mother lode (1). Howland begins her analysis by looking at how James took an anecdote given to him one night at a dinner party and made the tale purely the Statesn. To Howland, the very localisation of Washington Square stands for James perception of the stifling provincial lif e of America in that it is the object of Morris aspirations the prison of Catherines confinement the seat of the Doctors power (sic) (16). By confining the characters to the sm each world of Washington Square, says Howland, James created a unopen system in which he could work his irony most effectively (5). She also notes how James changed the simple anecdote into an ironic contest of wills. He made the overprotect the heavy rather than the fortune-hunter, and he made the father a scientist, a scholarly doctor so that he fit in with the American values of earning an income (or seeming to), and appreciating science (Howland 3). Howland also does an quick-witted comparison of Washington Square in relationship to Jamess other novels by pointing out how he frequently talked about love in footing of the financial. As Howland says, With James, theres never enough love to go around one persons recognise is always anothers loss (7), and money is quite commonly involved in the equation . In addition, James has another system of economy that is always at work in his novels. As Howland says, at the beginning, the good heroines are all in the dark, but by the end, they are the only ones who see (15).