Unaccustomed to courtship and susceptible to charm Catherine falls deeply in love with the handsome opportunist Morris Townsend. Her father Doctor Sloper scenting a fortune-hunter is confident he can prevent the marriage. So confident that when persuasion fails he artempts to protect Catherine by threatening to disinherit her.

Washington Square is high dram a battle of wills between father and daughter enacted in the exquisite drawing-rooms of New York society in the 1850s a world evoked to perfection in one of Henry James's most popolar and accessible novels.