Kate Ground's Real Name

Washington Square, Henry James

literature aficionados know better this novella by Henry James for his film adaptation, with the title "The heiress " ("The Heiress "), made in 1949 the director William Wyler (with Olivia de Havilland in the title role, for which she won an Oscar) than the novel itself.

Henry James (1843-1916) born in the State of New York, but a naturalized British at the end of life, was a prolific writer with ability to write and publish. Some of his works, apart from the above, have been successfully carried to the movies as " The Bostonians (James Ivory, 1984)," Portrait of a Lady (Jane Campion, 1996, with Nicole Kidman) " Golden Cup" (James Ivory, 2006) and especially its most famous ghost story " The turn of the screw (" The latest twist "), adapted in 1961 with the title more Film, " Suspense!". Cosmopolitan

lover luxury and great mansions, Henry James may fall as the last of the Victorian novelists, for his impeccable mastery of the art of words and the detail of their descriptions. But, as the History of English Literature at the University of Cambridge to study in the race Perhaps the supreme merit of Henry James is that no other writer has matched the power to reveal what really happens in the minds and souls of his characters, while describing with meticulous accuracy no more than what happens outside " 1 . Perhaps the alleged superficiality has favored the many film adaptations His best known works.

The book we just read - "Washington Square " - is a good example of the style of Henry James. His narrative is strong, it keeps the plot in every delivery 2 introduces short dialogues theatrical elements as inputs and outputs, a variety of scenarios, the characters communicate with expression and gesture, as if the author guessing his destination after film . Some critics blamed weakness in the painting of characters. I think people in this novel of father and daughter, Dr. Sloper and Catherine, dissimilar in terms of moral evaluation of this suitor, Morris Townsend, are well drawn, not so much the secondary as the girl's aunts and the same young man advantage just not well-defined. The author, despite the good reception given to this work, did not like too much and was about to remove it from the collection of his works.

the reader, you may miss the title of the novel and explain it. Henry James was born and spent his early years in a narrow street that came to this square, Washington Square, and when, 36 years, writes this book in the winter of 1879-1880, in London alone, living as an expatriate and choose New York and the urban place to set his story perhaps paying tribute to his nostalgia for the happy days of childhood.

Despite its predictable end, it still is but if you've seen the movie, this novel by Henry James may be a good solution for entertainment on a short trip or a relaxing read in one of those afternoons silly, nothing to do, where we do not feel like leaving home.

© Manuel Martínez Bargueño
June 2010

If you have interested in this article and want to ask, comment or contribute something about it can leave a comment or write to my email e manuelblas222@gmail.com with confidence be promptly addressed.

Thanks. Manuelblas

NOTES

1. University of Cambridge. " History of English Literature " Vol II. Ediciones Pegaso. Madrid, 1953, pag. 475.

2. The work was published in serial form, almost simultaneously in England and America: June-November 1880 in the English Cornhill's Magazine from July to December of that year in the American Harper´s New Monthly Magazine