Catherine Sloper, heiress to a considerable fortune, lives in a fine house in Washington Square with her widowed father and aunt. She is quiet and kind but not, in her father's critical gaze, very clever, and when the handsome and attentive Morris Townsend, newly returned to New York, begins courting her, her father forbids the match, doubting Morris's motives. The shadow of her father, an esteemed physician still mourning the loss of his beloved wife, hovers over Catherine as she grapples with decisions that will stay with her for the rest of her life.