01365nam a22001457a 4500003000400000005001700004008004100021040003000062082001900092100002500111245003700136260003800173300004500211500096300256KCU20240930131736.0240930b        |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aKCUbengcKCUdKCUeAACR2  223a813.4bJAM  aJames, HenryeAuthor  aWashington Square /cHenry James  a2001:bWordsworth Classic;c2001.  axxi, 151 p. :c4.92 x 0.35 x 7.87 inches  aIntroduction 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 1870s, 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.