The Art of Strategic Retreat — Washington Square

The narrator corrects Morris: Catherine did not truly consent to an immediate private marriage. She burned her ships rhetorically, but Morris, having drawn that declaration from her, discovered excellent reasons to avoid fixing a date while leaving her sure he had one in mind. He weighs Catherine's guaranteed income against the risk of marrying too soon and losing her larger inheritance if Dr. Sloper disinherits her. Clever men, James notes, dislike risking their bones even when Providence favors boldness. Catherine suffers another kind of calculation. Once she chose Morris against her father's warning, honor told her she had forfeited the right to live under his protection while defying his wisdom. She wants Morris to offer another home soon because remaining in Washington Square feels like theft of kindness she no longer deserves. Dr. Sloper enforces the point by not looking at or speaking to her for a week, a planned cruelty she meets with quiet industry and private visions of Morris. Mrs. Penniman supplies theatrical significance to every trivial gesture, rustling through the crisis while Catherine's grief stays unstudied and unnoticed. At last Catherine tells her father she still sees Morris about once a week and expects to marry before long. He examines her like a stranger, asks why not three times a day, and says her moderation does not make disobedience respectable. When she pleads for some sign he still cares, he answers that her marriage is not a button on his coat. The next day he softens only strategically, asking whether she will marry within four or five months and then offering a European trip during a six-month delay. Catherine brightens at the word like, yet knows she would rather stay with Morris. When she says she must tell Townsend, her father suggests she is asking permission; the line is so finely dramatic that she feels both respect and resistance. She then argues that if she lives with him she ought to obey him, and if she cannot obey she ought not enjoy his kindness. The Doctor laughs that the theory is his too, calls the idea bad taste, asks whether Townsend supplied it, and grows more determined than ever to take her abroad. Morris trims his sail, Catherine sharpens her conscience, and her father treats the household as a laboratory of pressure.