Agnieszka's Reviews > Washington Square

Catherine Sloper doesn’t strike us as a representative heroine. This novel has definitely more expressive and memorable protagonists but it is Catherine who, of all residents of the house at Washington Square, draws my attention. Though she is neither pretty nor smart she is gentle and kind and painfully shy. Just before Washington Square I read Daisy Miller and now I simply can’t help comparing the main heroines. Where Daisy is coquettish and reckless Catherine remains modest and immovable. Where Daisy fancies for romantic adventure Catherine has her feet firmly on the ground. When the first shines and dazzles us with her beauty the other is plain and dull. Or so we were told. Unlike Daisy Catherine does not want to shine, she does not demand our constant attention. And though both like nice dresses unfortunately Miss Sloper’s taste leaves a lot to be desired. So where Daisy looked lovely and dazzling Catherine appeared old and rather ridiculous. Had only Daisy had a bit of Catherine’s common sense. Or the other way round: what if Catherine was more flirtatious in the image of Daisy Miller?

Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background.

Catherine, being respectful and dutiful daughter, is nonetheless a great disappointment to her father. She has neither beauty of her late mother neither wit of her father. Her days go on knitting, keeping house, visiting relatives and attempting at all cost to please her father. Doctor Sloper is remarkable figure. He’s a brilliant man, renown doctor and he flatters himself being an expert in reading people. He has neither good opinion on his sister Lavinia nor his daughter. In his estimation Lavinia was like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!. And about Catherine he used to think she is about as intelligent as the bundle of shawls…; her main superiority being that while the bundle of shawls sometimes got lost, or tumbled out of the carriage, Catherine was always at her post, and had a firm and ample seat.

As one can see Catherine has not an easy life. She is a victim of cruel remarks of her brilliant father who does not miss any opportunity, any neat bon-mot, any snide comment, even if it would hurt her feelings. And his remarks can cut to the quick, really. She is a victim of her foolish aunt Lavinia whose unbridled appetite for love affair and secret romance makes her push Catherine into the hands of fortune hunter. She is a victim of a handsome con man who made her to believe she was loved and wanted because of herself not her money. Finally, she is a victim of own good character and just awakened heart.

But I do not see a victim in her at all. I see a woman whose way to independence and self-determination is long and bumpy, I see a woman whom any humiliation and disappointment will not be spared, I see a woman who is fed up with being constantly send to the corner.

Catherine loves her father dearly but at the same time she’s afraid of him. But it lasts until it dawns to her that father doesn’t love her, that he doesn’t see his daughter as an independent, self-reliant person, that he denies her right to own opinion and choices, that even her act of rebellion is to him a kind of entertainment and he only thinks that his dull daughter had, after all, the guts to stand up to him, that Catherine wasn’t to him a partner at all. And once becoming aware of that fact she’s free. She can acknowledge finally the fact that Maurice had trifled with her devotion. She can see that aunt Lavinia eased him the task. And recognition of that liberates her.

From her own point of view the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its spring. Nothing could ever alter these facts; they were always there, like her name, her age, her plain face. Nothing could ever undo the wrong or cure the pain that Morris had inflicted on her, and nothing could ever make her feel towards her father as she felt in her younger years. There was something dead in her life, and her duty was to try and fill the void.

I liked her loyalty and raw honesty, her defiance and stubbornness to make her point, her silent opposition to her upbringing, to her father. Doctor Sloper says at one point of Catherine not being scenic. Poor Doctor, he couldn’t be more wrong. And after all he deserved that little revenge from her hand in the end. Everyone used to see Catherine as poor thing. They couldn’t be more wrong either. And the fact that Doctor saw through Maurice from the beginning and despite that failed I found highly ironic.


After reading the last passage of the novel I couldn't help but smile when this image came to my mind. Let's call it alternative review for Washington Square, though Catherine is too polite to express it that way. But I can say it for her. (view spoiler)[
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4,5/5