 If you're studying the character of Catherine as part of your study of Washington Square by Henry James it's really important to pay attention to specific quotes relating to her character, okay? So this is Catherine Sloper's character in the novel, Washington Square. Now remember that Catherine is actually a very shy and socially awkward character and she is this novel's protagonist. In fact, you can say that maybe she's its tragic heroine, okay? On the one hand, she is incredibly submissive to her very overbearing father, Dr. Sloper, who really sees her as a disappointment because she is such a contrast to his deceased wife, to his dead wife. So whilst Catherine is way too submissive, perhaps Dr. Sloper really sees her as very different to his dead wife who he kind of has on this pedestal. He idealizes her and Catherine symbolizes everything that her mother is not, okay? Which is what maybe leads him to be so horrible and spiteful towards her. However, Catherine is also presented as a little bit plain, a bit dull and not very attractive. And so also we feel a bit of pathos and empathy for her because she's not seen as particularly attractive in society, she has very limited options as a woman and this therefore leads a mercenary character, what we would call a wolf like Maurice Townsend to take advantage of this perhaps insecurity she has. And of course, Maurice is really her only true love from her perspective. We know that he never really truly loved her but that's the only love she has from her perspective and he ultimately ends up breaking her heart. And we know kind of even if he were to marry her, so even if Dr. Sloper relented and Catherine married Maurice, we kind of know how it would have ended, okay? Maurice would still have broken her heart but also he would have squandered all her money, okay? So we see Catherine as a very tragic figure and even if towards the, as the novel progresses, she actually asserts her individuality and she actually pushes back against her father and really asserts her own independence and even at the end when Maurice tries as an older person to get back into her life, she also asserts her independence from him so we do like that about her. She's still described as a very solitary gloomy character, okay, so we feel a lot of sympathy and empathy for her. Now as I mentioned, it's good to have some quotes that you have studied and you can bear in mind if you're writing about the character of Catherine. So I've put behind me key quotes to consider with her character and kind of some of the word love analysis and even the structural analysis you can do when you're writing about either of these quotes. Now the first quotation, which obviously illustrates that Catherine herself knows, she's a little bit plain, a bit dull. She herself admits that I am not magnificent and of course the adjective magnificent shows that Catherine has internalized probably a lot of what Dr. Sloper has told her, that she's not beautiful, she's very plain, no man would want her, okay. So she admits herself that she's not very magnificent. Again, here we can see that there's an element of truth because we do know from the description that Catherine does seem a bit boring, a bit plain, but it's also still quite sad to see that she perceives herself in this way. She seems a little bit beaten down. The other quotation which illustrates actually how she goes from feeling a little bit discarded a bit by society, no man is interested in her and then Morris quotes her, he sees her and then she falls in love, okay. She's never felt anything like this and of course Catherine is very, very reserved. Therefore even this feeling of love seems like a new feeling and this feeling is described in this way. Her own heart was filled ellipsis with the impulse of self-effacement and sacrifice. Now James, the author, uses alliteration here in her and heart as well as siblings and self-effacement and sacrifice and what the alliteration and siblings shows is Catherine is experiencing these emotions anew. She's never really experienced such strong emotions. She's somebody who's given herself over to very bland emotions and Morris is really the only person who comes in and lights her fire but then sadly he himself goes away and then she resumes a fairly gloomy, fairly predictable lifestyle. The next quotation which we can relate to Catherine's character is when she ultimately gets fed up of how her father is treating her and his refusal to accept the engagement and the marriage. She actually stand up for herself and to even tells him, look, I'm still willing to marry Morris because she knows that she can rely on the inheritance that she's gotten from her mother which is a sizable inheritance. She's an heiress. She has a big inheritance, both from her mother and also from her father when he passes away. Now she states and she is really angry about how he's treating the whole engagement and she says, I shall never plead with him for anything and of course the words never and anything are hyperbole. Hyperbole is over exaggeration. Now here we can see that Catherine is now really starting to gain a sense of self, a sense of self-worth but also most importantly, she's coming from under his foot, okay? So he's very dominant and overbearing and she's peeking her head out from there and we as readers feel really happy that she's starting to ultimately stand up to her father and assert her own independence and autonomy. The next quotation relating to Catherine's character is we can see that once Morris leaves it's really, really sad. She's back to being a really solitary character who's kind of alone in New York society but if she's part of upper class New York society she's a very lonely figure and this is emphasized through this description. Catherine sat alone by the parlor fire, ellipsis, lost in her meditations and again here we can see especially through the adjective alone that she's a very lonely figure and the only light in her life which is Morris that now has been extinguished and we feel a lot of pathos sympathy for her. The next quotation which relates to her character and we can see the submission, the sense of duty that she does feel still to her father is when she confirms to him, look, if I don't marry before your death I will not after and we've got repetition of the pronouns here. Again, we can see that Catherine obviously now clearly shows her father that if he refuses the relationship with Morris which he does, he is ultimately the one to blame for the breakdown of their relationship and she is going to almost use her lack of marriage as a penalty that she's gonna hold over his head. Again, we can see here there's a bit of friction in the relationship and Catherine is now pushing back against her, we could call him tyrannical father. The other quotation which illustrates how we see her as a sympathetic figure is when Morris decides to definitively break off the engagement. Catherine said, look, I'm still gonna marry you. You're not gonna get my dad's inheritance but you're still gonna get my inheritance from my mom's side. But we realize that Morris is quite greedy because he wants both inheritances and because he can't get Dr. Sloper's inheritance confirmed then he's not gonna marry her at all and of course his true intentions come out. And Catherine says, how are you beaten? Because Morris says, oh, I can see that Dr. Sloper has beaten me and he said, and Catherine asks, how are you beaten if we marry? And of course this is a question or an interogatory sentence. This question is Catherine's way of saying if you genuinely love me you would still marry me anyway. And of course Morris then refuses he breaks off their engagement and Catherine, it slowly dawns on her much later on we can argue that she realizes he never really loved her. It was all about the money. Her father was right. The next quotation which we can tie into Catherine's character, of course when this love is extinguished is she confirms that everything is dead and buried with Mrs. Penniman. When Mrs. Penniman checks, oh my God, are you guys still, you know, are you together, are you together? No, everything is dead and buried. And of course she's speaking using metaphors. This is metaphorical language, dead and buried. And she's talking about the death of their relationship but also it could be the death of her spirit. Her, you know, rejecting any other suitor afterwards which she did and completely rejecting any form of love in her life. The next quotation relating to Catherine's character is when we learned that there was something dead in her life. This is of course after the engagement is called off. So there wasn't something dead in her life and her duty was to try and fill the void. So there was a void that was a result of this broken love. And of course the word dead and life are opposites. They are oxymorons. And what this is illustrating is that Catherine never really got that love and fulfillment from any other relationships after her relationship break down with Morris which fills us with intense sympathy for her character. She's a very sympathetic figure. The final quotation relating to Catherine where we can see that she has really grown as a character when she's much older and she asserts her position as a woman even if she's not married as when Morris tries to be friends with her when they're much older. And she refuses and in fact, actually she tells him that he really hurt her. She stands up for herself finally and she states, you treated me too badly. I felt it very much. I felt it for years. Now the repetition of the words I felt, okay? So I felt or even I felt it. What this is illustrating is Catherine has finally learned to become very assertive and confident in her own character. So even if she's not plain she's willing to own who she is. And of course by the end we can see that she has really gotten a strong sense of herself and who she is in what can be a very misogynistic, a very patriarchal, male dominated society in New York, okay? So she's really embraced not being a married woman and being a spinster which obviously in 1800s in New York society would have been looked down upon, okay? So that's really it. When it comes to revising for the character of Catherine Sloper in Washington Square. Thank you so much for listening.