A final flaring of the Catherine Wheel
Once more I'm drawn to the last dialogue between a middle-aged Catherine and Townsend who has returned to Washington Square, as Dr Sloper predicted, a decent interval after the doctor's death. Now, terse and masterful, Catherine dismisses the gold-digger in no uncertain terms. But eureka, I now see her terse language as, above all, ironic. Catherine, once eminently straightforward, now speaks only in irony!
Quote:
You would have surprised him if you had told him so; but it is a literal fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the
ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she had to cut her pleasure out of the piece, as it were. There were portions left over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she never knew what to do with, which seemed too delicate for her own use; and yet Catherine, lamenting the limitations of her understanding, felt that they were too valuable to waste and had a belief that if they passed over her head they yet contributed to the general sum of human wisdom.
What better testimony to her enduring regret, recovered respect, and enduring love for her late father than to finally adopt his "ironical form"? The same form Austen Sloper used in demolishing Morris Townsend two decades earlier, that afternoon at Washington Square. The ending, the tragedy, comes full circle.
Quote:
It was her habit to remain in town very late in the summer; she preferred the house in Washington Square to any other habitation whatever, and it was under protest that she used to go to the seaside for the month of August. At the sea she spent her month at an hotel. The year that her father died she intermitted this custom altogether, not thinking it consistent with deep mourning; and the year after that she put off her departure till so late that the middle of August found her still in the heated solitude of Washington Square.
