Decisions do furnish a life

What Henry James shows us about rationality and its consequences

Last week I wrote about Wellness, the book I've recommended most over the past year. But of the books I finished in the last calendar year, it wasn’t my favorite. Without a doubt, that would be Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

I had never read Henry James before. I was more familiar with his brother, William James, who published the Principles of Psychology in 1890. William James is considered the founder of experimental psychology, my field of training. He framed much of the study of psychology as it exists today; the table of contents of his Principles reads like a modern intro to psych text. He also wrote with admirably stylish prose: fluid, literary, and comprehensive, like a 19th century Steven Pinker. So it was William James—not Henry—who for most of my life informed my template of what it meant for a writer to produce psychologically insightful work.

But then I read Portrait of a Lady and realized just how off that assumption had been. It was Henry James—not William—whose work felt like it really penetrated to the core of human psychology.

I finished reading Portrait in January of this year (as 12 months ago now), and in many ways I’m still processing what I got from it. But last week I read James’s shorter, less ambitious, but no less exquisite Washington Square. It's a precursor to Portrait, both temporally (James published it in the same year he began Portrait) and thematically (they're psychological profiles of a female protagonist operating in a complex social setting). I've found it difficult to write about the full breadth of Portrait of a Lady and the impact it had on me. So writing about Washington Square seemed like a good place to start.

[I asked Claude to prompt me with a series of questions about the book. The AI’s questions have been lightly edited; the answers are my own.]

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Let's start with the basics. What happens in Washington Square?

The story is about a young woman named Catherine Sloper. Catherine's father is an eminent doctor in New York City. As a young man, Doctor Sloper falls in love with an incredible young woman (Catherine's mother). But even with all his medical training, both his wife and his son become ill and die; he's left only with Catherine and his two sisters.

The problem is that Doctor Sloper doesn't think much of Catherine. Whereas Catherine's mother was intelligent and witty and beautiful and the center of every room she entered, Catherine is demure. She doesn't say much. And what she does say does not exactly suggest that a great of wealth of insight lays below the surface. But Catherine is nonetheless loyal and kind and not unpleasant to look at and (perhaps most crucially) going to come into a lot of money from both her mother and father. So the question is—as it always is in this kind of novel—who should Catherine marry?

Catherine does not have a lot of suitors, but eventually she notices one very charming young man named Morris Townsend, who looks like Jude Law in The Talented Mr Ripley. To Catherine's total shock, her aunt informs her that Jude Law aka Mr Townsend has actually been admiring her as well. They begin a courtship.

Here's the problem: Morris Townsend doesn't have a job. He had an inheritance of his own, but he squandered it on booze, travel, girls, and general good living. (Though according to his own—rather convincing—account, he maintains that this was a judicious use of his money.) When Doctor Sloper learns of their courtship, he says that if the only duty of a son-in-law is to be an engaging dinner guest and to make progress on consuming his father-in-law's wine cellar, then Morris would have his full endorsement. But that is not the metric by which potential sons-in-law ought to be judged. Doctor Sloper quickly becomes convinced that Morris is trying to marry Catherine for her money.

This is where the really intriguing psychological dynamics come in. Doctor Sloper does not forbid Catherine from marrying Morris. He says she is free to make her own choice, but that if she goes through with the marriage Catherine will be disinherited (at least from her father's money; she'd still have her mother's). Doctor Sloper is clever and obdurate and in this case almost certainly right. At the beginning of the story, we are told that Catherine is not especially clever. But that’s just her father’s opinion: we don't know what hides beneath the surface. What we come to see for ourselves is that Catherine is, as her father suspected, not all that smart. But she is obdurate, to much the same degree as him. And no one—not Catherine, not Doctor Sloper, not Morris Towensend, not the reader—knows how this trait is going to influence the decisions she makes that drive the broader narrative.

Given how much psychological weight you find in this story, I'm curious: What qualities or experiences made Catherine capable of sustaining such intense scrutiny from James, despite being "not especially clever"?

One of the things I wrote about Wellness last week is that no one's theory of what it means to be well is caricatured by the author. Everyone's argument is presented in its strongest version. A similar claim is true of James's characters: none of them is obviously superior, either morally (as arbiters of right and wrong) or practically (as someone whose decisions are maximally effective in the way they intend). Nor are they inferior. Everyone is painted with a fine brush.

A lot of the novel is drawn by how characters’ unique dispositions contrast with one another. For example, Catherine Sloper and Morris Townsend are opposites in may ways. Whereas Catherine is simple but loyal, Morris is clever by devious. With the arguable exception of Catherine, all of the characters are quite static. And we’re both shown and told that very quickly after their introduction. It creates a sort of chess board. We know how the pieces work individually. The question is how they’ll interact.

From the book’s outset we, as the reader, know that the Doctor Sloper is right. Quoting from the second line of the back-cover blurb: the novel “studies the plight of an innocent heiress who is deceived by the good looks and the charm of a worthless suitor.” It is not advisable for Catherine to marry Morris. There’s no doubt that Morris is an idler and that he sees Catherine as a ticket to an easy life. But he never actually admits to this motive. And he is so canny in presenting his own perspective that yes, he had his fun, but now he's reformed and is driven purely by his love for Catherine. There’s still room for the reader to think hell, maybe the father doesn't know everything. Maybe Catherine really should take the liberty of making her own decisions. She's her own woman after all. And for that matter, Catherine doesn't have a lot of other suitors. Even if he does have an interest in the money, does she not deserve to be with someone who is charming and worldly and looks like Jude Law? Is Catherine's only route in life defined by strict adherence to her father's wishes?

In trying to dissuade his daughter from marrying Morris, Doctor Sloper takes two tacts. The first is to threaten disinheritance. If Morris is only pursuing Catherine for her money, he thinks, then this ought to be enough to put him off. The second is to distract Catherine. Specifically by taking her on a six-month trip to Europe. Perhaps Mr Townsend will get bored and move onto other things. Perhaps Catherine will see that there's a lot more to this world than Morris Townsend. The six-month trip stretches into a year. On the final night of the journey, Doctor Sloper asks Catherine if she still intends to marry Morris. She says she does. They go back to New York.

What everyone underestimates in Catherine is that she is heir not only to her father's money but also his hard head. In the beginning, we think the central question of the story is: Does Morris Townsend just want Catherine for her money? It's a not entirely uninteresting premise for a plot. But the reader eventually sees that this isn't the central question of the plot. It is rather: who will fold first? Catherine or her father? And that's what really draws you in, taking the story from one about courtship to the finer nuances of the characters' psychology.

You've described how Henry James portrays psychological tensions through seemingly simple situations. How does this compare to the way modern psychology studies and describes human behavior?

There's a word I keep coming back to when describing Henry James's psychological profiles: exquisite. There's a fineness and sensitivity to them that experimental psychology could never quite achieve. Experimental psychological is only able to make claims about human beings in general. That on average, people to do this rather than that.

Let’s take confirmation bias: people are selective in how they interpret information, such that they're more likely to consider evidence that aligns with their current views. This is a widely known concept from psychology, and it's easy enough to apply in everyday life. But what are the real consequences of confirmation bias? Sure, it leads to biased decisions. But what does that really mean for the course of an individual's life? Does that kind of bias even matter in the long-term? If so, how?

Catherine and her father both succumb to confirmation bias. Catherine interprets the initial signals of Morris's intensions as evidence of his affection. Doctor Sloper interprets the initial signals of Morris's profligacy and idleness as evidence of that he always looks for an easy way out—in this case, the easily fooled Catherine and her impending wealth. Both make no attempt to look for contrary evidence that would disconfirm their initial hypothesis.

This analysis is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.

For one thing, it misses why each character is so beholden to their initial hypothesis. Doctor Sloper's identity is wrapped up in being right. What makes his character so exquisite psychologically is that he is really is right: his judgment is consistently more accurate than that of everyone else in the story. But his unswerving desire to be correct also makes him mean. He hands down his judgments from on high. He can't relate to people who don't arrive at the same conclusions—neither Catherine nor his sisters.

[N.B. - spoilers incoming.]

Doctor Sloper's climactic actions—the ones that most directly determine how his character resolves in the end—are defined by the kind of high-handed sarcasm which with he celebrates his victories of perspicacity. When Catherine returns from Europe, she tells Morris she still wants to marry him. Morris is delighted. Then she makes it clear to Morris that, should they marry, they will not inherit her father's money. He asks her if she is sure. Yes, she says. Really sure? Completely. No room for further negotiation? Not an inch. Then Morris, in his infinite compassion, decides that it would be unfair—truly unjust!—for Catherine to enter in a union which requires her to forsake her relationship with her father. It's not the lack of inheretence money that bothers him. It's the fact that it would destroy Catherine’s relationship to her father, to whom she is so devoted. He breaks off their engagement.

The jilted Catherine puts up a facade. Later that night she sits at her father's table and pretends like nothing is wrong. But her father has already begun the process of severing their connection. She declared her intention to go through with the marriage. In response, he is overly cordial, treating her like a guest rather than a daughter. A couple days after Morris breaks off the engagement, Doctor Sloper approaches Catherine. He asks her if she'd be so kind as to hold up her end of the bargain—that she give him three days notice before eloping with Mr Townsend. "I have not left your house," says Catherine, implying that she when she does make arrangements to leave, Doctor Sloper will be duly informed.

Eventually the conversation progresses, and Catherine reveals that the engagement is over. The reader can feel that this is the singular moment the story has been building to. Doctor Sloper has been right this entire time and it will be one of the great joys of his life to be able to declare “I told you so.” But then she lies: she said that she is the one who ended it. Doctor Sloper is taken aback. The action raises more questions than it answers. He is pretty sure she is lying. But that's not the point. The point is that he wanted to be able to say he was right, and he took that away from him.

Instead of comforting his daughter, whom he suspects of having been left by her suitor of more than a year, he seeks to hurt her.

"How does he [Morris] take his dismissal?" asks the Doctor.

"I don't know!" says Catherine ("less ingeniously than she had hitherto spoken," adds James.)

Doctor Sloper sees his opening, how she has made herself vulnerable for his needling.

"You mean you don't care? You are rather cruel, after encouraging him and playing with him for so long!"

James summarizes the exchange: The Doctor had his revenge, after all.

And that's why the kind of broad baskets into which experimental psychology throws human behaviour can never really get at what James shows. It's actually Doctor Sloper's ability to make unbiased, accurate judgments that ultimately destroys his relationships with his remaining family. That's not the sort of thing that was remarked upon in the original Kahneman & Tversky paper on heuristics and biases in decision-making.

So are you saying that comparing decision-making to a rational basis - as either deviating from it or clinging to it - misses the point? In a way, it sounds like psychology has a limited imagination when it comes to the consequences of a given decision.

In the case of Doctor Sloper, the arc of the story is about rationality and its consequences. Because the thing is, he actually gives a fairly solid defense of why he responds to Catherine's jilting the way he does. Essentially, he says that if he were to soften his reaction to the disillusion of Catherine's would-be union, it would be a kind of endorsement of it. He has maintained from the outset that their marriage is a bad idea and that he does not support it. The only reason Catherine is in this mess, according to Doctor Sloper's view, is that she went against his wishes. This view isn't necessarily a model for fatherhood. But it is at least intellectually consistent—that is, rational.

[Caution: more spoilers; this one is really serious, if you plan on reading the book.]

The main part of the book ends in this stalemate between Catherine and her father, neither having really gotten what they want. The final few chapters then give an epilogue, presenting the reader with a verdict on where everyone's decisions got them to in the final tally. After more than two decades of not having discussed her engagement to Morris Townsend since the exchange culminating in the father's "revenge," Doctor Sloper raises the subject. He asks Catherine, point blank, if she has any inclination to marry Mr Townsend upon his own death. He asks her to swear that she will not marry Mr Townsend. Catherine basically tells him to go to hell. She says that while she has not been in touch with him and has no intention to marry him after all this time, she still won't swear never to do so. Why should she? Catherine's father cocks an eyebrow. He tells her that he's just about to alter his will. She doesn't budge.

Within the year, Doctor Sloper dies. His will is read allowed by the executor of his estate. The main part of the will declares the majority of his health to be left to his daughter Catherine. Then an addendum: the sum is to be reduced to one fifth of its original amount, with the rest going to hospitals and medical schools. The reason given: with the endowment from her mother, "her fortune is already more than sufficient to attract those unscrupulous adventurers whom she persists in regarding as an interesting class."

Even after his death and though Catherine never technically violated his wishes or indicated any imminent plans to do so, he still punishes her.

Catherine, for her part, is asked immediately whether she intends to break the will. "Oh no," she replies. "I like it very much. Only I wish it had been expressed a little differently!"

In the final scene, Morris Townsend presents himself at Catherine's door. He's put on some weight over the years, but still retains his charm. He asks Catherine whether she might still have any interest in marriage. No, she tell him—not even a little bit. He asks her, then, whether she might be willing to be friends. Absolutely not, she says. How about just a little chat? he asks. Not on your life. She slams the door in his face.

He turns and mutters: Damn, I really thought it was going to work that time.

What we can see this psychological profile offered by Henry James—as opposed to what you’d see in the kind experimental psychology pioneered by his brother James—is how our decisions layer on top of one another in the course of a life. When you look at the famous Kahneman and Tversky studies, they study decisions as one-off events. Every decision (and any potential biases the researchers detect) are independent from one another. In Washington Square, they’re not. Catherine, Doctor Sloper, and Morris Townsend are all dealing with the consequences of their decisions (rationally defensible or not) decades after they were originally made. To me, that seems like an important aspect of life. And I think if you’re only analyzing decisions from the perspective of experimental psychology, you’re likely to miss it.