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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Fiiiinally finished. I know it’s a good book but it took me too long to read to give it 4 stars
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Me ha parecido una mierda… 220 páginas sobre dos personas que se quieren casar pero no pueden porque el padre de ella no les deja…
Dios mío creo que nunca me había desesperado tanto un personaje como la tía Lavinia. Jodió hasta la última página.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Strangely addictive and impossible to put down, this novel grows on you like persistent ivy, takes you down the path of a deliciously and slowly narrated story, and in the end leaves you completely dissatisfied, puzzled, and aggravated that the anticipated sweet spot never comes.
I had no idea about the plot beforehand. The novel is written from the perspective of a third-person observer who years later recounts the story that happened at Washington Square in NY. I liked the setting and the story teller’s voice.
We are first introduced to Dr. Sloper, the calculating, mathematically exact, stoic, brilliant medical doctor with a outstanding reputation for saving lives and curing illnesses over his long career. The later years are not kind to him and the ultimate irony befalls him when he is unable to save his own small baby boy from a disease as well as his wife during the second childbirth. His son he adored for being a son, naturally, and his wife he worshiped for her intelligence, elegance, beauty and for understanding him. He is left with a daughter, Catherine, and brilliant as our doctor may be, he considers females to be of the lesser sex – and dear Catherine starts out very poorly with causing the death of her own mother, however helplessly that it may have been.
To ease the burden of having to care for Catherine, he invites his widowed sister, Mrs. Penniman to live with them. She personifies the usual meddlesome, annoying, know-it-all older woman who takes pure pleasure in creating unnecessary drama and inevitable anguish in the lives of younger people, quite similar to Mrs. Jenninges in Pride and Prejudice, but with lesser intent for good.
As the years pass, Catherine grows up to be quiet and shy, awkward and lonesome, reserved and obedient, without much opinion or expression on anything but most of all, in constant want of fatherly love and approval. Dr. Sloper’s words, mixed sparingly with compassion and kindness, usually cut like a blade and leave you wishing he had not said anything at all instead. He makes derogatory remarks about his daughter, whom he finds far from intelligent, charming or beautiful, in public and to her face.
One reviewer wrote that she had to perform “linguistic surgery” to piece together the rare morsels of kindness from the doctor’s speeches. In these passages, while I was enjoying the reading just fine, I was by no means terribly interested in either the plot or the outcome. Not just yet.
The inevitable happens. Catherine meets a suitor. The young, beautiful Mr. Morris Townsend who is back in NY from his recent adventures, one day sits next to shy Catherine Sloper at a party and and hears himself talk for over an hour. Catherine is subdued, and yet to her impressionable eyes, he seems to fit into a picture of happiness. She soon morphs him into the ideal man for her, and some sort of courting ensues.
Mr. Townsend as he is hereafter referred to except Morris on occasion by Catherine, comes to the house frequently to visit. During this time, the Doctor’s curiosity is naturally raised and he asks Mrs. Penniman on the account of Mr. Townsend, and later of his other sister, the only sibling whose opinion he seeks and respects, Mrs. Almond. After gathering his facts about Mr. Townsend, little that they may be, he decides once and for all, that the suitor is after Catherine’s inheritance, both from her mother’s side and from what her father will leave her.
He refuses to bless the couple. Catherine refuses to give up on his father, and this is exactly where my interest is piqued. I must admit that on the whole, I found the father to be stern but likely looking out for Catherine’s best interest, and I hardly cared for Mr. Townsend but those are small stuff in the face of what really interested me.
The burning question for me was why she refused to make the promise to the doctor to never marry Morris after his death. “I can’t promise that, and I can’t explain“, Catherine says. She makes the doctor very angry and costs herself a rather large portion of what would have been in his will for her.
This leaves us thinking that she has ulterior motives, that she has plans, hopes, dreams to pursue when he is gone. And yet the author awards us with neither an explanation nor a motive for why Catherine said those words.
Did she want to keep a sense of freedom, when it was impossible to lose anything else after her permanent wound? Perhaps. Did she wish to hurt her father in return by not giving him the satisfaction he was asking for? Doubtful from what we know of her personality – she never showed any tendencies towards malice or vengeance.
Perhaps then, she wanted to leave the door open and Morris just came very late. I am still not sold on that. Who knows besides Henry James? No one. Perhaps, there is a time in life when we stop pursuing a dream of our youth, a point of no return to the past when too much time has passed, a nonchalance to even our own chance for happiness when we are so used to lack of it and it takes so much courage to take a risk again.
The agonizing story of Catherine Sloper will ring in my ears forever. I forgive the author for straying me without delivering what I fully expected as the reader. I shall let my imagination decide the reasons which prompted the lovelorn and heart broken Catherine to choose the path of her life and her disposition in general.
I had no idea about the plot beforehand. The novel is written from the perspective of a third-person observer who years later recounts the story that happened at Washington Square in NY. I liked the setting and the story teller’s voice.
We are first introduced to Dr. Sloper, the calculating, mathematically exact, stoic, brilliant medical doctor with a outstanding reputation for saving lives and curing illnesses over his long career. The later years are not kind to him and the ultimate irony befalls him when he is unable to save his own small baby boy from a disease as well as his wife during the second childbirth. His son he adored for being a son, naturally, and his wife he worshiped for her intelligence, elegance, beauty and for understanding him. He is left with a daughter, Catherine, and brilliant as our doctor may be, he considers females to be of the lesser sex – and dear Catherine starts out very poorly with causing the death of her own mother, however helplessly that it may have been.
To ease the burden of having to care for Catherine, he invites his widowed sister, Mrs. Penniman to live with them. She personifies the usual meddlesome, annoying, know-it-all older woman who takes pure pleasure in creating unnecessary drama and inevitable anguish in the lives of younger people, quite similar to Mrs. Jenninges in Pride and Prejudice, but with lesser intent for good.
As the years pass, Catherine grows up to be quiet and shy, awkward and lonesome, reserved and obedient, without much opinion or expression on anything but most of all, in constant want of fatherly love and approval. Dr. Sloper’s words, mixed sparingly with compassion and kindness, usually cut like a blade and leave you wishing he had not said anything at all instead. He makes derogatory remarks about his daughter, whom he finds far from intelligent, charming or beautiful, in public and to her face.
One reviewer wrote that she had to perform “linguistic surgery” to piece together the rare morsels of kindness from the doctor’s speeches. In these passages, while I was enjoying the reading just fine, I was by no means terribly interested in either the plot or the outcome. Not just yet.
The inevitable happens. Catherine meets a suitor. The young, beautiful Mr. Morris Townsend who is back in NY from his recent adventures, one day sits next to shy Catherine Sloper at a party and and hears himself talk for over an hour. Catherine is subdued, and yet to her impressionable eyes, he seems to fit into a picture of happiness. She soon morphs him into the ideal man for her, and some sort of courting ensues.
Mr. Townsend as he is hereafter referred to except Morris on occasion by Catherine, comes to the house frequently to visit. During this time, the Doctor’s curiosity is naturally raised and he asks Mrs. Penniman on the account of Mr. Townsend, and later of his other sister, the only sibling whose opinion he seeks and respects, Mrs. Almond. After gathering his facts about Mr. Townsend, little that they may be, he decides once and for all, that the suitor is after Catherine’s inheritance, both from her mother’s side and from what her father will leave her.
He refuses to bless the couple. Catherine refuses to give up on his father, and this is exactly where my interest is piqued. I must admit that on the whole, I found the father to be stern but likely looking out for Catherine’s best interest, and I hardly cared for Mr. Townsend but those are small stuff in the face of what really interested me.
The burning question for me was why she refused to make the promise to the doctor to never marry Morris after his death. “I can’t promise that, and I can’t explain“, Catherine says. She makes the doctor very angry and costs herself a rather large portion of what would have been in his will for her.
This leaves us thinking that she has ulterior motives, that she has plans, hopes, dreams to pursue when he is gone. And yet the author awards us with neither an explanation nor a motive for why Catherine said those words.
Did she want to keep a sense of freedom, when it was impossible to lose anything else after her permanent wound? Perhaps. Did she wish to hurt her father in return by not giving him the satisfaction he was asking for? Doubtful from what we know of her personality – she never showed any tendencies towards malice or vengeance.
Perhaps then, she wanted to leave the door open and Morris just came very late. I am still not sold on that. Who knows besides Henry James? No one. Perhaps, there is a time in life when we stop pursuing a dream of our youth, a point of no return to the past when too much time has passed, a nonchalance to even our own chance for happiness when we are so used to lack of it and it takes so much courage to take a risk again.
The agonizing story of Catherine Sloper will ring in my ears forever. I forgive the author for straying me without delivering what I fully expected as the reader. I shall let my imagination decide the reasons which prompted the lovelorn and heart broken Catherine to choose the path of her life and her disposition in general.
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
