Washington Square

Catherine Sloper (played by Olivia de Havilland) behind her embroidery in the film 'The Heiress', 1949, based on the novel Washington Square, by James Irvin. Catherine Sloper (played by Olivia de Havilland) behind her embroidery in the film 'The Heiress', 1949, based on the novel Washington Square, by James Irvin.

'Washington Square' is a short novel by the American author Henry James (1843-1916), in which embroidery (also called 'fancy-work') plays a major role. Henry James published the novel in serial form in 1880, in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine.

The novel was adapted for a play in 1947 by Augustus and Ruth Goetz ('The Heiress'), and the play was subsequently adapted for a film directed by William Wyler in 1949, starring Olivia de Havilland as Catherine, the main character of the story.

The film won four Academy Awards. Two more film versions were made, namely in 1972 ('Victoria', by José Luis Ibañez) and in 1997 by Agnieszka Holland. In 1976 the novel was made into an opera by Thomas Pasatieri.

The story deals with the relationship between a father, Dr. Austin Sloper, and his unassuming daugher, Catherine. They live at Washington Square in New York. The father is a succesful medical doctor, still affected by the untimely death of his beautiful wife. He simply cannot appreciate his somewhat dull, plain-looking and socially inexperienced daughter. He tells her that the only good she can do is working her embroidery. The daughter falls in love with a penniless and wastrel suitor, Morris Townsend, who is not accepted by Dr. Sloper, who suspects him to be after his daughter's inheritance (although it is clear that he married Catherine's wealthy mother partly for the same purpose).

When the two decide to push through with the marriage, Dr. Sloper tells Catherine this may mean he will disinherit her. When Morris Townsend hears of this, he hurriedly leaves town. He returns many years later, after Dr. Sloper's death. Catherine pretends to fall in love with him again, but at the appointed time of their wedding she refuses to meet him, having realised that her father and her fiancée have both treated her cruelly and nothing can undo that. In the 1949 film, this is the moment she completes the embroidery she was making, and dramatically cuts off the remaining loose threads on the reverse of the cloth. In the book, when Townsend has made his unsuccesful attempt at winning her again, we find her: “picking up her morsel of fancy-work.” She had “seated herself with it again — for life as it were.”

Source: SWAAB, P. (2000). 'The end of embroidery: from Washington Square to The Heiress'. In: Bradley, J, (ed.), Henry James on Stage and Screen (pp. 56-71). Palgrave.

Digital source of illustration (retrieved 20 November 2016).

WV 

 

Last modified on Monday, 21 November 2016 17:37