In 1840s to 1850s
New York City, the conventional, plain, shy, naïve, and introverted 22-year-old Catherine Sloper lives with her highly respected and wealthy physician father, Dr. Austin Sloper, in
Washington Square, a then newly-established neighborhood near
Greenwich Village. After the deaths of his wife and infant son, Dr. Sloper lives with Catherine with his widowed sister, Mrs. Penniman, who effectively converts her temporary residence into a permanent arrangement and in effect comes to be charged with Catherine's education. Although never disclosed directly to Catherine, Doctor Sloper does not hold his daughter's quiet, reserved personality or plain appearance in high regard, finding these a disappointing contrast with her deceased mother. Catherine is not particularly socially gifted nor possessed of great dress sense (a situation not helped by her father's rather parsimonious attitude towards her). Catherine's cousin Marian gets
engaged to a man named Arthur Townsend. At the
engagement party, Marian introduces Catherine to Arthur's cousin Morris Townsend, who flirts with her throughout the party, the first time a man has paid her any attention. Catherine is smitten with the attractive and charming Morris, who has wasted his own relatively modest inheritance on wild living and is now impecunious, but claims to be a changed man. Morris is aware that Catherine has an inheritance from her mother and will presumably inherit a greater fortune from her father. Highly skeptical of Townsend's motivations, Dr. Sloper has him to dinner in the Washington Square home and, relying on his own judgment, decides that the Morris cannot be trusted and is really only interested in Catherine's inheritance. His suspicions of Townsend's mercenary motivations are confirmed when he seeks out an interview with Townsend's sister, a woman of modest means but considerable integrity off of whom Townsend is sponging, and who advises, contrary to her own interests, against Catherine marrying her brother. Despite her father's demand that she end the relationship, Catherine continues to entertain Townsend. Mrs. Penniman, a romantic busybody, invests herself in their relationship as well, taking Townsend's side. When Catherine discloses to Dr. Sloper that they are engaged, the doctor makes plain that any such marriage will result in her exclusion from his will, and reinforces this message by treating his loving and sensitive daughter with deliberate and extraordinary coldness in an attempt to bend her to his will. Sloper takes his daughter to
Europe for a year, hoping she will forget the now somewhat-vacillating Townsend, who, in contrast, hopes Catherine will win her father to his cause during the trip. Aunt Penniman invites Townsend to visit the Sloper home often in their absence, as later discovered by Dr. Sloper through his depleted wine collection. She forwards letters from Townsend in her own letters to her niece. While Dr. Sloper and Catherine are in
Switzerland, Dr. Sloper, after several months of declining to discuss Townsend, confronts Catherine angrily over her refusal to renounce Townsend in a way that momentarily leaves her feeling physically threatened. She, however, resolutely refuses to back down, upsetting Sloper with her disobedience. Once the Slopers arrive back in New York, a calculating Townsend, now unwilling to go through with the marriage in the clear knowledge that Dr. Sloper will disinherit his daughter, breaks off the engagement, indifferent to the pain he is causing Catherine and rationalizing it to the meddling Mrs. Penniman, whom he secretly holds in contempt, that without her full inheritance Catherine will be at a disadvantage. Deeply wounded by Townsend's desertion and with her relationship with her father badly damaged, Catherine, who finds herself with no-one in whom she can confide her trauma, continues her life at their home in Washington Square with her father and aunt. Although she is courted by two suitors, at least one of whom is very much in love with her and has her father's approval, she refuses both and cultivates a life of her own that includes charity work and caring for her aging father, and never marries. Eventually, Dr. Sloper, in whom Catherine has not confided, demands of Catherine that she will not marry Townsend after his death. Although she has no contact with Townsend and no intention of ever marrying him, she refuses to be forced by her father into making any such commitment. We later discover that her father, whom she subsequently nurses at his demand on his deathbed, has responded to her refusal by cutting her inheritance to a mere fifth of what it otherwise would have been, accompanying this decision with some cutting wording in a codicil to his will. Catherine, although not pleased with the wording, accepts the reduction in her inheritance without any resentment, living as she has been in any case well within the means willed to her by her deceased mother. After Dr. Sloper's death, Aunt Penniman orchestrates, without permission, a meeting between Catherine and the now middle-aged but still handsome Morris, who has reappeared in New York, having enjoyed little financial success in life and having married in Europe and been widowed. Surprised and dismayed by his unwanted reappearance in her life, which is informed by his knowledge that she has inherited from her father, even if not as much as he expected, she decisively rebuffs Townsend's attempt to re-establish any relationship between them or presence in her life, and continues her unmarried life. ==List of characters==