He refuses to give his blessing to their engagement so Catherine must decide whether to remain loyal to her father or follow her heart. She falls deeply in love with a charismatic and broke young man called Morris Townsend, whom her father is convinced wants Catherine for her inheritance. Here, James' heroine is the well-meaning, plain and rich Catherine Sloper. It's like Austen, but infinitely more depressing.

Washington Square, however, is more of a straight-up drama, that sees familial duty clashing with a potential romance. I also hear that James gets a little more experimental in his later works, delving into that stream-of-consciousness style that has never really floated my boat, which might explain why I heard a lot of complaints about him from English students at university. I read Henry James once, years ago, and I picked The Turn of the Screw, which turned out to be a bad decision. “If you are going to be pushed, you had better jump.”Īlmost everyone in this book is awful, but I. His theatrical work is thought to have profoundly influenced his later novels and tales. An extraordinarily productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel writing, biography, autobiography, and criticism,and wrote plays, some of which were performed during his lifetime with moderate success. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to realistic fiction, and foreshadowed the modernist work of the twentieth century. James insisted that writers in Great Britain and America should be allowed the greatest freedom possible in presenting their view of the world, as French authors were. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allowed him to explore the phenomena of consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.

His plots centered on personal relationships, the proper exercise of power in such relationships, and other moral questions. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the encounter of America with Europe. He spent much of his life in England and became a British subject shortly before his death. Henry James, OM (1843-1916), son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author, one of the founders and leaders of a school of realism in fiction.

Washington square by henry james