In his novel The Spoils of Poynton Henry James writes about "the impression, somehow of something dreamed and missed, something reduced, relinquished, resigned: the poetry, as it were, of something sensibly gone." Henry James found poignancy again and again in the subject of missed opportunity. He wrote about it in Portrait of a Lady, in The Wings of a Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors. And in Washington Square, he writes with deep psychological insight about the painful legacy of a love relinquished.
Heiress Catherine Sloper falls in love with Morris Townsend, who hasn't much to show for himself but a pretty face. In fact, Morris has already blown through a large sum of money when we meet him, and we learn as the novel progresses, that he's recently been sponging off his sister.
Naturally, Catherine's father doesn't approve. "The position of husband to a weak minded woman of great fortune would suit him to perfection," Dr Sloper tells his sister. And so he puts his foot down. If Catherine accepts Townsend's proposal, she must give up her fortune as well as her father's love.
In the end, we realize Dr Sloper's assessment was correct. Morris Townsend is certainly after Catherine's money, and had they married, he would definitely have blown through her fortune. This would have made her deeply unhappy.
Or would it?
Was Dr Sloper right to press his point? He was logically correct, yes. But was he emotionally correct?
Had they married, Catherine might have helped Morris grow up. Maybe they would have grown together. Had they married, Catherine would have experienced the joy of marrying the man she loved, however flawed. They might have had children. Her life would have expanded. And who is to say that her calculation would have been wrong? She knew she wasn't charming or clever (in her own eyes, as well as in the eyes of her father), but at least she had money. Was that so bad? And she loved Morris Townsend in spite of his weaknesses. Just because it might have ended badly, would their marriage have been bad altogether?
Maybe all marriages, however good in the beginning, eventually wind up as compromises. Some end up bad and some end up mediocre. Others end up not so bad. But how long is a marriage expected to bless both husband and wife? Some answers might be found in our And the Winner Is... Book Club selection this month - Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge. In this novel, marriages start out as one thing, but end up as something quite different. Life is very long and people are always complicated.
In the first story 'The Pharmacy' Olive's husband Henry becomes enamored of his coworker Denise, and he's particularly protective and tender with her when her husband dies. But right from the beginning, Olive doesn't like Denise. She is jealous and annoyed at the prospect of entertaining Denise and her husband, and whenever Henry shows tenderness for Denise, Olive reacts with impatience.
But Olive's close observation of Henry and the habits of their domestic life have, over a long marriage, come to stand in for love. We are introduced to Olive as an unpleasant woman who never apologizes for anything. Olive has no patience for good people, least of all for Henry - but meanwhile she has endless insights into and sympathy for the underdogs of the world.
In a later story, Olive looks at childhood photographs of her son and thinks to herself, "you will marry a beast and she will leave you." She then looks at a picture of Henry as a young man and thinks, "You will marry a beast and love her." Yes, she, Olive, is the beast that Henry will love.
In 'Tulips' the most complex story in the collection, Henry gives Olive an ugly bunch of daisies and when he embraces her, Olive is annoyed. She endures his embrace, waiting for it to end. In a later story, she wonders why she feels such deep loneliness with Henry, even though he is such a loving man. We as readers also wonder why Henry puts up with Olive. When they are observed coming into a church at one point, one character remarks to another, "I don't know how he can stand her."
All marriages, Elizabeth Strout seems to say, deepen and sour over time. When Olive observes young girls in a sundae shop she thinks how there loomed "... great earnestness great desires and great disappointments; such confusion lay ahead of them and (more wearisome) anger; oh, before they were through, they would blame and blame and blame, and then get tired too."
We are left, after reading both these very different novels, with the sense of people who forgo their deepest passions for the sake of something else. For something supposedly more endurable - and longer lasting. Maybe that something else is familiarity and comfort in one's own discomfort with the smallness of life. Elizabeth Strout seems to suggest that it is more intrinsically human to stick with each other's flaws, madnesses and mistakes than to break free of them, and that perhaps there is something ennobling in such steadfastness.
Except at the end of Olive Kitteridge when Olive's life is all but over, she finds a new and very surprising lover. She begins to understand what she misunderstood about love in her youth, how she had taken it for granted and how it could transform her.
Not so for Catherine Sloper in Washington Square. One of our regular participants in the Classic Books Discussion group said he was sorry that Washington Square hadn't ended like its film adaptation The Heiress - with Catherine empowered, resisting Morris Townsend as he pounds on her door begging for her hand in marriage. Because in the novel, Catherine Sloper does something sadder and more predictable. She is left alone in the parlor and she's broken. She has had it with love. When Townsend leaves, she settles down to her needlepoint, "for life, as it were."
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