An account of passionate conflicts in the developing urban America of the 19th century. The story of Catherine Sloper, her harsh father, and her fortune-hunting fiancé is a clash of predatory males vying for power through traditional and non-traditional means. Catherine Sloper's stance is that of a brave woman who, fighting to assert her difference outside of established male rules, is crushed. The "Washington Square," the setting of the novel, is a primordial place where innocence is tested: a place where the petty spirit of Dr. Sloper, the provincialism of Mrs. Penniman, and the guiltily neutral stance of Mrs. Almond clash with the innocence of the Sloper ladies, who are found everywhere on earth. In this novel, the mature Henry James develops for the first time all those fictional techniques that established him as one of the greatest craftsmen of the genre.