Abstract

Washington Square, like The Portrait of a Lady, is an open-ended Henry James novel that concludes ambiguously and unhappily, counter to the trend of many other Victorian novels. While many contemporary Victorian novels center on marriage and inheritance plots, concluding their protagonists' struggles with felicitous performative utterances of "I do" and "I bequeath," Catherine Sloper's future is less clear: at the conclusion of Washington Square, she remains both unmarried and disinherited. Both characters and readers alike seem stymied by Catherine's motivations at the end of the novel, as famously studied in Judith Butler's essay, "Values of Difficulty." Catherine seems calculable, submissive, and guileless at the beginning of the novel--both her father, Dr. Sloper, and her suitor, Morris Townsend, judge her to be good but "decidedly not clever." So what happens over the course of the novel to produce Catherine's infelicitous and incomprehensible outcome? This thesis's performative reading of Washington Square sheds light on the infelicitous and inscrutable conclusion to Catherine's story. At a critical moment in the novel, when her inheritance is at stake, Catherine refuses to be coerced into offering a promise that is demanded from her by her father. "I can't explain," says Catherine," "And I can't promise." This refusal to promise, or refusal to enact a felicitous performative--accompanied by an inability to explain her refusal--is a suspensive and powerful method of disinterpellation. Catherine unmakes herself as a subject in the capitalist ideology of the male antagonists in Washington Square--and thus, becomes incomprehensible to them--by insisting on infelicity. This powerful disinterpellation helps Catherine regain control over her future.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; English

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