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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Coming into the Twentieth Century:
Narrative Strategies in
Edith Wharton's Fiction

presented by

Kathleen D. Hadley

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

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COMING INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY:
NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN

EDITH WHARTON'S FICTION

BY
Kathleen D. Hadley

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1991

65¢ — 50771

ABSTRACT
COMING INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY:
NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN
EDITH WHARTON'S FICTION
BY
Kathleen D. Hadley

This study considers Edith Wharton's use of narrative
strategies, including her pervasive use of irony and her
experiments with narrative form, in five novels: The Reef
(1912); The Custom of the Country (1913); The Age of
Innocence (1920); The Mother's Recompense (1925); and The
Children (1928). In writing several novels, Wharton began
with a certain center of consciousness, worked with that
character for a while, and then changed to another for the
finished novel. Much of the irony in these fictions results
from Wharton's undercutting her own narrators' perspectives
and her concern with the stories she ostensibly leaves
untold. Of the works discussed in this study, Wharton's
switching the novel's center of consciousness has had the
most dramatic impact on The A e of Innocence; critics have
so thoroughly accepted Newland Archer's perspective that
they have missed the narrative's insistence on the
importance of Ellen's and May's stories, along with
Wharton's ironic treatment of Newland.

The different uses that Wharton makes of her men
characters' and her women characters' untold stories

reflects her concern with issues of sexual freedom and the

sexual double standard. Drawing on the work of Rachael Blau
DuPlessis' Writing Beyond theggndinq: Narrative Strategies

'of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (1985), I argue that

 

Wharton removed Ellen Olenska from the narrative center of
The Age of Innocence because her story was not "narratable"
by early twentieth-century conventions. Conversely, Wharton
left the stories of her men characters' sexual "experiments"
untold both because these stories were predictable for the
reader and because, by showing her women characters'
ignorance of such stories, Wharton emphasizes that these
women are outsiders to the male world.

The tendency of Wharton's male characters to prefer
younger, presumably more malleable women creates an incest
motif in her fictions. Wharton‘s characters also tend to
view other people as rivals, usually for another person's
love. Ultimately, the failure of these characters to
articulate their needs to each other prevents most of them
from gaining psychological or sexual fulfillment. As a
result, Wharton's novels tend to end without a sense of

resolution for her characters.

Copyright by
KATHLEEN D. HADLEY

1991

DEDICATION

For my husband, Curt Hadley, once again.

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to each of my committee members for your
consistent support and enthusiasm. I am particularly
grateful to Dr. Linda Wagner-Martin for continuing to work

with me long after she left Michigan State University.

vi

 

PREFACE

This study draws on the work of several recent critics
who have discussed twentieth-century responses to
traditional nineteenth-century novels. In Writing Beyond
the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women
Writers (1985), Rachel Blau DuPlessis explores the ways in
which modern women writers diverge from and therefore often
subvert the plot requirements of the sentimental tradition,
in which "any plot of self-realization was at the service of
the marriage plot," with women's stories ending either in
marriage or in death (6, 1). DuPlessis, taking The House of
girth as the representative Wharton text, thinks Wharton's
work belongs to the nineteenth-century tradition. But
Wharton undermines the novel's apparently traditional
structure in several ways. Most obviously, in The House of
girth, there is no lingering sentimental death scene in
which the heroine makes her peace with everyone; Lily Bart
dies alone, and Lawrence Selden arrives at her side too late
either to speak "the word which made all clear" or to save

her (342).1

 

1See Linda Wagner-Martin's discussion of The House of
Mirth's denouement, which she sees as performing "the subtle
unmasking of the still inaccurate narrator, Lawrence Selden"
(36—40).

vii

viii

In contrast to DuPlessis, Dale Bauer and Amy Kaplan
focus on The House of Mirth in placing Wharton in the
context of twentieth-century realism. In Feminist Dialogics
(1988), Bauer notes that Wharton's "ironic distance" from
the marriage plot "prevents her from continuing the
sentimental trajectory," and discusses Wharton's "textual
struggle between the sentimental novel and the realist
experiment with those sentimental designs" (95, 99).
Kaplan, in her 1990 The Social Construction of American
Realism, reassesses Wharton as "a professional author who
wrote at the intersection of the mass market of popular
fiction, the tradition of women's literature, and a
realistic movement which developed in an uneasy dialog with
twentieth-century modernism" (66). Discussing Lily's
attending another woman's wedding early in The House of
girth, Kaplan says, "By having Lily miss her chance to play
this role [of bride] in the beginning of the novel, Wharton
rejects marriage as the narrative teleology of the domestic
novel, and implicitly calls attention to her narrative as
realistic" (93-94).

In Gender and the Writer's Imagination (1987), Mary
Suzanne Schriber says that while William Dean Howells and
Henry James challenge the culture‘s "traditional
understanding of woman," Wharton goes further: "The novels
of Edith Wharton deconstruct the culture's horizon of
expectations, asking previously unthinkable questions and

exploring previously unimagined areas of ‘woman's nature'

 

 

 

ix

that were anathema or invisible to male novelists" (3).
These ”previously unimagined areas" include "matters of
intellect and female sexuality" (Gender 15). A little more
conservatively, Janet Goodwyn views Wharton as providing a
bridge from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, as she
reacts "to the removal of the inherited securities and
values of her nineteenth-century upbringing" and provides a
woman's insight into "the fact that the women of America are
the creators and arbiters of the social scene" (Traveller in
the Land of Letters 4).

My project continues the work of bringing Wharton into
the twentieth century. I explore Wharton's narrative
strategies in five novels, from The Reef (1912) to 1hr
Children (1928). I focus on Wharton's women characters and
the ways in which she "writes beyond" traditional novels,
ironically undercutting her own narrative structures and
calling attention to stories she has ostensibly left untold.
I have chosen to discuss works that have been relatively
neglected, as is the case with Wharton's "Jamesian" novel
The Reef, and two of her presumably inferior later novels,
The Mother's Recogpense (1925) and The Children; and works
whose women characters have been neglected in favor of
attention to the male characters, as has happened with Ihg
Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence
(1920).

The publication of these novels spans the time from the

dissolution of Wharton's marriage to Teddy Wharton and the

close of her affair with Morton Fullerton, to the death of
her close friend Walter Berry. Berry's death capped more
than a decade of such losses, beginning with the death of
Henry James in 1916. The sexual awakening Wharton
experienced in her relationship with Fullerton is evident in
her fictional explorations of women's passion. By ending
with The Children, this study returns full circle. 1hr
Children explores a situation quite similar to that in 1hr
ngt. But Wharton‘s depiction of Martin Boyne's confused
desire for Judith Wheater is much more subtle than her
portrayal of George Darrow, who assumes that there are two
major types of women, each designed to serve different
aspects of "the more complex masculine nature" (gggi 25).
Although Wharton's two completed novels after 1hr
Children also reflect her narrative concern with untold
stories and with her characters' psychological development,
Wharton‘s special concern with religious issues and what
Elizabeth Ammons calls "the maternal principle" in gggggh
River Bracketed (1929) and its sequel, The Gods Arrive

(1932), place them beyond the scope of this study.2

 

2Edith Wharton's Argument with America, 189. Ammons
sees Hudson River Bracketed and The Gods Arrive as
reflecting the aging Wharton's desire to "synthesize her new
endorsement of motherhood with her lifelong belief in
woman's right to self—determination" (189).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One

"Feminine Types" and the Double Standard
in The Reef

Chapter Two

Undine's Unending Story in The Custog_of
the Country

Chapter Three

Ironic Structure and Untold Stories in
The Age of Innocgnce

Chapter Four

Repaying Her Daughter:

The Mother's Recogpengg

Chapter Five
Passion and Possession in The Children

Conclusion

Bibliography

xi

41

86

105

147
176
188

INTRODUCTION

Criticism has traditionally overlooked Edith Wharton's
narrative strategies and has therefore devalued her fiction,
considering it a remnant of the nineteenth century. R.W.B.
Lewis, in his 1975 Wharton biography, recalls Vernon L.
Parrington's labelling Wharton "‘our literary aristocrat'"
and implying "that for all its craftsmanship her book [1hr
Age of Innocence] was irrelevent to the more pressing issues
of the day" (429). The Literary History of the United
States (1959) says Wharton "is likely to survive as the
memorialist of a dying aristocracy" (Quoted in Baym 128).
And Rachel Blau DuPlessis, whose Writing Beyond thergndinq
(1985) discusses twentieth-century women writers'
experiments with narrative form, sees Wharton as belonging
to the nineteenth—century sentimental tradition. Even
those making a case for Wharton's place as an important
twentieth-century author have often felt compelled to
qualify their arguments. Despite rejecting Parrington's
view, Lewis refers to The Age of Innocence as "a gihgr
masterpiece" (Edith Wharton 429, my emphasis). Irving Howe,
who in 1962 lamented that "justice has not yet come to Edith
Wharton," goes on to call her "a writer of wit, force and
maturity," though "not the peer of Hawthorne, Melville and

James" (1).

Throughout her career, however, Wharton experimented
with narrative form, writing ironic variations on the
traditional nineteenth-century bildungsroman and sentimental
novel. She often, with apparent intention, undermined the
ostensible structure of her novels. This study brings
Wharton into the twentieth century by considering such
elements as her pervasive use of irony, her subtle attention
to the often "untold" women's stories, and her concern with
her characters' psychological development, in five novels:
The Reef (1912); The Cgstog of the Country (1913); The Age
of Innocence (1920); The Mother's Recompense (1925); and 1hr
Children (1928). These novels exemplify some of Wharton's
most successful experiments with form. I eschew the common
view that Wharton's career peaked with The Age of Innocence;
her portrayal of Kate Clephane's egocentrism in The Mother's
Recompense is certainly more subtle than her
characterization of Undine Spragg's egocentrism in 1hr
Custom of the Country; and her consideration of the
relational triangle in The Children is an astute variation
on her earlier treatment of a similar situation in The Reef.

Wharton's concern with narrative form is evidenced in
her careful reworking of the plans for many of her novels.
For instance, Wharton outlined several versions of 1hg_hgg
of Innocence, each focusing on Ellen Olenska as the novel's
center of consciousness but varying the details of her
involvement with Newland Archer. Wharton often set a

manuscript aside, returning to it as many as 20 years later

3

(in the case of The Mother's Recompense), when she was ready
to return to the subject or to explore her material from a
different perspective. Wharton's returning to The Custom of
the Country, a novel about multiple divorces, after her own
divorce is a classic example. In the interim, she wrote 1hr
Rggi, exploring issues of women's passion, sexual freedom,
and commitment with two seemingly different women—-women
who, in fact, George Darrow categorizes as opposite "types."
It may be that Wharton needed to work more with the issue of
two separate, complex women, which she had addressed
previously in her 1907 The Fruit of the Tree, before she was
ready to depict a character as multi—dimensional as Undine
Spragg in The Custom of the Couhtry.

In writing several novels, Wharton began with a certain
center of consciousness, worked with that character for a
while, and then changed to another for the finished novel.
Much of the irony in these fictions results from Wharton's
undercutting her own narrators' perspectives, and her
concern with the stories she ostensibly leaves untold.
Discussing the politics of the untold story, DuPlessis says:

To compose a work is to negotiate with these

questions: What stories can be told? How can

plots be resolved? What is felt to be narratable

by both literary and social conventions? Indeed,

these are issues very acute to certain feminist

critics and women writers, with their senses of

the untold story, the other side of a well—known

tale.... (Writing Revond the Ending 3)
0f the works discussed in this study, Wharton's switching

the novel's center of consciousness has had the most

dramatic impact on The Age of Innocence; critics have so

 

thoroughly accepted Newland Archer's perspective that they
have missed the narrative's insistence on the importance of
Ellen's and May's stories, just as many readers have missed
Wharton's ironic treatment of Newland.1 Similarly, Wharton
began what was to become The Mother's Recompense as the
story of the abandoned little girl, only much later
reworking it to focus on the mother, Kate Clephane. Here,
again, Wharton's narrative calls the reader's attention to
the other major characters' untold stories, despite Kate's
indifference to them. In The Reef, Anna Leath becomes
obsessed with a particular story from Sophy Viner's life--
that of her sexual involvement with George Darrow——and comes
to view Sophy as symbolic of all the risks and involvement
with life which she herself has not experienced.

In each of these novels, Wharton's male characters tend
to prefer the women who seem the most malleable and
therefore the most subject to their influence, because they
are either threatened or disillusioned by the relatively
independent adult women. The Age of Innocence's Newland
Archer, as Elizabeth Ammons says, "mythicizes May after her
death, and he does so out of fear of the dark, ‘grown up'
woman," Ellen (Edith Wharton's Argument with Agerigg 152).
Wharton repeatedly uses the motif of a relational triangle

to explore the ways in which a man categorizes two women as

 

1See for example Richard Lawson, who accepts Newland's
perception of May: "Her innocence is the innocence of the
title," Lawson says, despite her frequent ability to act to
protect her world (22).

5

separate types, usually to the detriment of the older, more
experienced woman.2 Thus, in The Reef, George Darrow finds
Sophy Viner more "natural" than Anna Leath; Chris Fenno
marries the daughter of his former lover, Kate Clephane, in
The Mother's Recompense; and The Children's Martin Boyne
sabotages his engagement with a woman his age because he
decides he is in love with a fifteen—year-old girl who views
him as a father figure.

Recent critics have questioned readings that rely on
the male character's perceptions and that sometimes result
in negative, one—dimensional views, as when Edmund Wilson
labelled Undine Spragg a gold—digging "bitch" (Argument
101), or Geoffrey Walton contended that George Darrow is
morally superior to Anna Leath, who "nags" him for details
about his affair with Sophy Viner (Edith Wharton 68—69).
Looking beyond the male characters allows, for instance, for
Mary Suzanne Schriber's discussion of the ways Wharton's
women characters' "behavior is often misconstrued" or
"rendered invisible and therefore unappreciated if it in any
way outstrips ordinary expectations of woman" ("Convention"
189). This misreading certainly occurs in 1h§_gggr, in
which George belittles Sophy's professional interest in the
theatre as a mere desire for amusement. And in 1hr
Children, Martin Boyne is quick to assume that Rose Sellars

is motivated by "womanly" jealousy in her response to Judith

 

2Wharton varies this theme in The Mother's Recompense
by using one of the women, rather than the man, as the
center of consciousness throughout the novel.

 

 

Wheater (252).

Throughout her fiction, Wharton's women forego marriage
after becoming disillusioned with their romantic
expectations, as does Anna Leath in The Reef. Or they
marry, often without romantic illusions, and try to
manipulate their world from within their marriages. Both
The Age of Innocence's May Welland and The Custom of the
Country's Undine Spragg-—two very different characters——make
the latter choice, but Wharton makes clear the limitations
of marriage for each. May lives out her life artificially
sheltered but knowing her husband is in love with another
woman, and Undine lives in a state of dissatisfaction that
stems from her inability to have the things she wants
without relying on a man to get them. Interwoven in these
fictions is the women characters' tendency to go aground on
the male sexual double standard, a problem Wharton addresses

with particular force in The Reef.

 

Chapter One
"Feminine Types" and the Double Standard

in The Reef

In her 1912 The Reef, Edith Wharton explores the
implications of the sexual double standard. She allows the
reader glimpses of George Darrow's past——a past involving a
man's socially-acceptable "experiments" with sex—~but shows
how keeping a "lady" ignorant of such stories is potentially
devastating. For the discovery that George has had an
affair while enroute to her turns Anna Leath's world upside
down. Wharton further questions the double standard by
making the "other woman," Sophy Viner, a sympathetic
character and by depicting Anna's attempts to understand a
"type" of woman from whose story a lady should presumably be
sheltered. Wharton makes a point of Sophy's orphancy early
in the novel (22) and then writes beyond the traditional
nineteenth—century options for an orphan girl-—
respectability as a governess or rescue through marriage——
without bringing Sophy's story to a definite conclusion.

Passion is central to The Reef. It is the factor that
most strongly connects Anna and Sophy, who defy George's
attempts to classify them. Both women struggle to be true
to their experiences; Anna, having paid for her silence in

the past by losing George, attempts to communicate with him

7

 

now, and Sophy refuses to deny her feelings for George.
Conversely, George uses language as a tool of diplomacy,
first as he seduces Sophy, and later as he attempts to
trivialize that affair to Anna. The women are under
constraints that do not affect George. For them, sexual
passion is to be confined to marriage, and both Sophy and
Anna suffer when they fail to honor this constraint. But as
a man, George can dismiss his affair with Sophy as
unimportant. He exempts himself from responsibility by
viewing Anna and Sophy in ways that, in his mind, excuse his
behavior.

The structure of The Reef suggests the conflict between
George's and Anna's perceptions. Wharton begins the novel
with George's perspective but then undermines his point of
view in Book II by switching to Anna as the novel's primary
center of consciousness. Wharton leads the reader into
Anna's perspective gradually; she is introduced first as a
"lady," then as "Mrs. Leath," and finally as Anna. The
progression parallels Anna's growing self-knowledge
throughout the rest of the narrative, as she relies
decreasingly on others' perceptions of her to understand
herself. Anna is initially shown through the eyes of a
narrator, who speculates that "she seemed...to be looking
about her with eyes to which, for some intimate inward
reason, details long since familiar had suddenly acquired an
unwonted freshness" (81-82). That this "was in fact the

exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath was conscious" is then

confirmed, and much of the story is henceforth seen from
Anna's perspective (82). By starting Book II with a
narrator, as well as neglecting to name Anna at first,
Wharton introduces Anna as George would see her: "a lady,"
calmly taking in her surroundings (81).

In the same sentence that we are assured of Anna's
perspective, she is also named--though as someone's wife.
The use of her married name leads naturally into "Mrs.
Leath's" memories of her first marriage. Looking about her
at Givre, Anna remembers her attitudes and expectations as a
young bride. She had expected love to be a "magic bridge"
from the "unreality" of her New York girlhood, into life
(86). She had had "romantic associations" about the
"chateau" and had expected a "noble and dignified" fate
there (82). Elizabeth Ammons, discussing Wharton's use of
fairy tales in Ethan Frog; and The Reef, points out that
Anna's earlier vision of marriage had been a "fantasy," "not
of escaping but of passively being freed, being saved, being
awakened and reborn into life by the love of a man-—the
fantasy, in short, of Sleeping Beauty's being awakened by
Prince Charming..." (Argument 80). But in her life with the
sedate Fraser Leath, Anna had found herself "farther than
ever removed from the strong joys and pangs for which she
felt herself made," and she had since become used to the
house as "the shell of a life slowly adjusted to its
dwelling," a place where she was comfortable, though not

happy (94, 83).

10

Anna's renewed way of looking at Givre as she
anticipates George's arrival ironically mirrors her
perception as a young bride. In trying to look at the house
through George's eyes, Anna "seemed to be opening her own
eyes upon it after a long interval of blindness" (83). She
perceives of the court as "full of a latent life" and feels
herself likewise filled with "a latent animation." Despite
the disappointments of her first marriage, Anna is capable
of anticipating her marriage to George with the same naive
eagerness. Ammons explains Anna's perspective as follows:
"Fraser Leath failed, but his widow blames the man, not the
dream, and therefore looks forward to marriage with her old
friend George Darrow" (Argument 82-83). Ironically, the
“veil" that had always existed between her and life, which
Anna believes has now been lifted by George, will be lowered
again by his deception (84).

Yet Anna's enthusiasm seems less fallacious when her
intense physical passion for George is considered. Wharton
takes care to explain how the young Anna Summers had become
the "lady" who married Fraser Leath. Anna had been raised
in a world in which "people with emotions were not visited"
and had had no one with whom to share her interest in "the
passions and sensations" of poetry.1 Anna became externally
"conquered" by this society but developed a "visioned region

of action and emotion" that contrasted with her increasing

 

1In his Wharton biography, R.W.B. Lewis notes the
similarities between young Anna Summers and Edith Jones
(Edith Wharton 326).

11

reserve (85). As a result, Anna had felt intense emotions
for George but could not express them to him. When they
were together, she would behave coldly, "while hot and cold
waves swept over her, and the things she really wanted to
say choked in her throat and burned the palms of her hands"
(87). When they were apart, Anna would resolve to act
differently, but she never overcame the strictures of a
society which ensured that women, as Florence Nightingale
said, "‘gggt act the farce of hypocrisy, the lie that they
are without passion'" (DeLamotte 217).

Anna had viewed physical passion as integral to what
she hoped would be a passionately intellectual relationship;
while George "wanted to kiss her," she "wanted to talk to
him about books and pictures, and have him insinuate the
eternal theme of their love into every subject they
discussed" (85). Perceiving George's interest in another
woman, Anna had become disillusioned. Into the void of her
"dissolved" hopes had come Fraser Leath, who seemed to offer
intellectual, if not carnal, "joys" (89). As James
Tuttleton says in "Mocking Fate: Romantic Idealism in Edith
Wharton's The Reef," Fraser had represented "the absence of
emotional danger" (466). It is no wonder that after a long
marriage to a man whose "kiss dropped on her like a cold
smooth pebble," Anna now perceives herself as "not used to
strong or full emotions" and looks forward to exploring
these feelings with George (89, 83).

Because he is unaware of her feelings, George's

12

perceptions of the adult Anna fail to go beyond her external
self. His view of her implicitly relies on her coldness
toward him as a girl. The novel begins with George's
reaction to a telegram from Anna, telling him to postpone
his visit. He is initially "chilled" by her "dealing so
reasonably with their case," and works himself up to the
point of assuming that "her ‘reason', whatever it was,
could...be nothing but a pretext; unless he leaned to the
less flattering alternative that any reason seemed good
enough for postponing him!" His thoughts continue, "She
didn't want him, and had taken the shortest way to tell him
so" (8). Neither George himself nor the narrative explores
the insecurity about his relationship with Anna that his
reaction reveals. Instead, George focuses on Anna's
character. He belittles Anna's life, "an existence...at
once so ordered and so exposed," in which a small
complication "might assume the magnitude of an
‘obstacle'..." (8). And while his work keeps them apart for
months at a time, George is indignant with Anna for
supposedly treating him "as if he had been an idler
indifferent to dates, instead of an active young diplomatist
who, to respond to her call, had had to hew his way through
a very jungle of engagements!" (8) The implication is
clear: George considers his commitments important (at least
his professional ones), and Anna's trivial.

George finds this postponement especially rankling

because, as he perceives it, Anna had already "submitted so

13

tamely to the disarrangement of their plans" within the
previous few weeks for the sake of her "family obligations."
He remembers that, on their last evening together——together
also with Anna's step—son Owen and her mother-in—law—-"they
had had an almost decisive exchange of words." Yet his own
memories show that thgy did not have any plans. Anna has
not yet answered his marriage proposal, but he has simply
assumed she was "walking to him down the years" and "would
come straight to where he stood" (7-8). Anna simply cannot
win. George considers her at one moment too cold and
reasonable because she has asked him to postpone his visit
for, he assumes, a trifling reason; and at the next moment,
he silently charges her with failure to use her "ingenuity"
to overcome whatever is keeping them apart (8).

Much of George's frustration with Anna appears to stem
from his lack of influence on her life thus far.2 He
believes he had missed his chance, when Anna was young, to
"put warmth in her veins and light in her eyes: [he] would
have made her a woman through and through." He speculates
that Anna "was still afraid of life" because she has always
been sheltered, and concludes,

A love like his might have given her the divine

gift of self-renewal; and now he saw her fated to

wane into old age repeating the same

gestures...and perhaps never guessing that, just

outside her glazed and curtained consciousness,

life rolled away, a vast blackness starred with

lights, like the night landscape beyond the
windows of the train. (29)

 

2Ammons discusses George's "Pygmalion" attitudes toward
Anna (Argument 94).

14

George thinks that without his early influence, Anna must be
somehow incomplete. His disdain for her "curtained
consciousness" is ironic in light of George's later attempts
to keep Anna ignorant of certain areas of his 1ife--most
notably his affair with Sophy Viner-~and in light of the
fact that he has these thoughts about Anna while on the
train to Paris, on which he shares a compartment with Sophy.
As a girl, Anna loses George because she cannot tell
him what he means to her. Soon after George's arrival at
Givre, we are told they are happy in each other's presence,
"Yet Anna was intensely aware that as soon as they began to
talk more intimately they would feel that they knew each
other less well" (105). Anna correctly anticipates the same
old problem of communication, but this time it is primarily
caused by George's deceptiveness, rather than by her
reserve. Their first real conversation since his arrival is
based on George's interest in letting Anna think he read a
letter from her which, in the midst of his affair with
Sophy, he had in fact thrown on the fire unopened. Since
the letter had contained Anna's "yes" to his proposal, she
is understandably upset by his cavalier attitude about
"ignoring" it (109). In fact, George came to Givre only
after Anna repeated her answer in another letter, several
months later. Anna persists in trying to discuss this
letter, and their misunderstanding about her telegram
delaying his visit, because "‘Between you and me everything

matters,'" and because "she wanted no less than the whole of

15

her happiness" (107). But all George can do in his defense
is to create a lie that puts Anna in the wrong. He tells
her that he didn't believe she really cared, and that he
"‘cared so much that I couldn't risk another failure'"
(110).

Anna correctly senses that she is an outsider to much
of George's world and perceives of any secrets between them
as a threat to her happiness. Her reference to their first
romance carries a double meaning that she is as yet unaware
of herself: "‘It's curious how, in those first days, too,
something that I didn't understand came between us'" (107).
George's ability to have a casual flirtation, even a
physical relationship, with another woman while courting her
is what Anna couldn't understand in the past and, rather
than the ostensible misunderstanding about their

correspondence, is the underlying cause of her uneasiness

now.

Anna's attempt to deal with her perplexity shows that
she remembers the lessons of their previous courtship and
will not let George go so easily this time. Yet her
obtuseness about George's affair indicates that, contrary to
the complete understanding Anna claims to want, she is
willing to pay the price of ignorance in some areas in order
to keep him. When she mentions the pink cloak Owen saw in
George's booth at the theatre in Paris, Anna shows how
accurate her instincts are. But when George does not

immediately give her a full confession of his infidelity,

16

Anna dismisses her suspicions (114—15). By denying her
perceptions Anna protects herself from fully understanding
the truth, even when it appears the truth should be most
obvious to her, throughout most of the novel.

Their inability to communicate with each other belies
George's earlier vision of rescuing Anna from the memory of
her first marriage, in which there had been no "communion"
(4-5). He assumes this lack of communion, not because of
anything Anna says, but because "her very reticence betrayed
her" (5). What Anna does not say to him, George takes as
evidence of a lack of communion with Fraser. Anna's
thoughts about Fraser prove George right, but in their case,
Anna is the only one interested in honest communication,
while George is snared by his lie about the letter from her
which he never read. Even the "deeper feeling of communion"
George believes he and Anna had shared in an earlier meeting
is a figment of George's "fancy" and is not based on speech
(5).

Once Anna begins to suspect what happened between
George and Sophy, her feelings are in constant fluctuation.
Richard Lawson says Anna's real concern is whether or not
her fiance is in love with the "other woman":

Anna, true daughter of her society, can

countenance, however reluctantly, George's having

sown wild oats. But she fears and dreads the

possibility that he might be in love with Sophy,

despite his protests to the contrary. (58)

The text, however, does not support the idea that Anna could

countenance this particular sowing of oats. Anna is

 

 

17

especially devastated by the fact that George had this
affair while he was on the way to her, to persuade her to
marry him. She is also unable to accept the idea that
George has no responsibility to Sophy. When he says,
"‘there's nothing I can do for her that will help her half
so much as your understanding her would,'" Anna responds,
"‘Nothing you can do for her? You can marry her!‘" The
exchange continues:

"You certainly couldn't wish her a worse fate!"
"It must have been what she expected...relied

on..." He was silent, and she broke out: "Or what l§
she? What are you? It's too horrible! On your way
here...to mg..." She felt the tears in her throat
and stopped. (292)

Anna's view that George should marry Sophy indicates her
failure to accept the standard by which men operate in her
society; she is as much appalled at his actions as she is at
Sophy's.

This is quite different from George's own perspective,
by which he considers Sophy unsuitable for Owen but does not
seem to have any compunctions about his own status as Anna's

fiance.a George has already rationalized this double

 

“The blatant hypocrisy of George's position was noted
as long ago as 1950, by Josephine Lurie Jessup. She
comments: "The idea of confiding the child Effie to Miss
Viner he finds ‘peculiarly repugnant,‘ although he does not
question his own suitability for the role of stepfather, any
more than he questions his right to marry the child's
mother, at the termination of his former liaison" (25).

More recently, Richard Lawson succinctly states the three
reasons why George opposes Sophy's marriage to Owen: George
"is acting out of an exquisite blend of self-interest, class
consciousness, and an unquestioning assumption of a double
standard of sexual morality" (57).

18

standard by classifying women according to "types." He "had
had a fairly varied experience of feminine types, but the
women he had frequented had either been pronouncedly
‘ladies' or they had not" (25).

Grateful to both for ministering to the more

complex masculine nature, and disposed to assume

that they had been evolved, if not designed, to

that end, he had instinctively kept the two groups

apart in his mind, avoiding that intermediate

society which attempts to conciliate both theories

of life. (25)
This extremely reductive view of women enables George to
enjoy Sophy's sexual "ministering," on the basis of which he
categorizes her as "not lady," without perceiving that their
affair stigmatizes him in any way. The idea that George
"liked his ‘ladies' and their rivals to be equally unashamed
of showing for exactly what they were" also suggests that
George does not like the "rivals," such as Sophy, to attempt
to cross over into the other category (25). This is later
confirmed by George's "obscure indignation" at Sophy when he
discovers she is engaged to Owen Leath and his "doubt as to
the disinterestedness of the woman who tries to rise above
her past" (187).4

When Anna declines to view George's affair as he does,
George changes tactics and tries to blame the affair on her.

"I was on my way to you....At the very last minute

you turned me back with a mere word....I'm not

saying this to justify myself. I'm simply trying
to make you understand." (293)

 

4Lady Ulrica--about whom George now has such unpleasant
feelings--is a third type: "the woman who uses the privileges
of one class to shelter the customs of another" (25).

19

But clearly George is trying (as he does at the beginning of
the novel) to take attention off of himself by focusing on
Anna's faults.a George also tells her that "‘a woman like
you'"-—the lady-type he had earlier admired so greatly-—
could never understand the "‘miseries and humiliations'"
that influenced Sophy to have an affair with him: she is
"‘too fine'" to grasp the fullness of life of which his
affair with Sophy Viner is a part (293, 295). Thus George
rationalizes his affair with Sophy on the basis of Anna's
presumed coldness and her inability, as a "lady," to
understand the complexities of life. But Anna has had
miseries and humiliations directly related to George. His
earlier flirtation with another woman, when Anna had thought
they would be together, is ironically the major experience
that has influenced her to speak more openly with George in

their new relationship.

Both Anna and Sophy are far more complex than George is
willing to recognize. George's attempt to dismiss his
affair with Sophy as a "‘moment's folly'" (293) indicates
not only the level upon which he operates, but how little he
expects of Anna, as well. By asking Anna to overlook the

affair, George is asking her both to sanction the sexual

 

aGeorge's attitude reflects his profession as a
diplomatist. Part of the Oxford English Dictionary's 1933
definition of diplomacy is "artful management in dealing
with others." A diplomatist is "a shrewd and crafty person"
(QEEL 385-86). These definitions apply to George as he
attempts to manage both Anna and Sophy, and as he attempts
firsst to make Sophy leave Givre without revealing their
affair, and later to overcome Anna's scruples.

20

double standard and to ignore her "too fine" misgivings
about what his having engaged so lightly in a sexual
relationship with someone says about George's character. As
Margaret McDowell comments, George's thus making light of
the affair is, for Anna, "only a sign of Darrow's
callousness, insensitivity, and masculine complacency" (60).
Anna tries to understand the situation from his perspective
(a greater courtesy than George extends to her), but she
cannot resolve her conflicting urges,

to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion

of a world in which such things could be; and at

the same time...to know more, to understand

better, to feel herself less ignorant and inexpert

in matters which made so much of the stuff of

human experience. (282)

Though Anna cannot view her fiance objectively, she does
come to understand a great deal about him and the
patriarchal world in which she lives. Listening to him
explain his affair with Sophy,

She wondered at his composure, his competence, at

his knowing so exactly what to say. No doubt men

often had to make such explanations: they had the

formulas by heart... (294, Wharton's ellipsis)

This insight is so overwhelming to Anna that "For a
moment she simply ceased to feel" (295). Her eyes are now
opened to other times when such "formulas" may have been
prepared but were unneeded because of her own blindness:

It had never occurred to her that [Fraser] might

have passions, interests, preoccupations of which

she was absolutely ignorant....She tried to

picture him...walking furtively down a quiet

street, and looking about him before he slipped

into a doorway. (321)

Anna: can no more imagine this than she can understand what

21

George's affair with Sophy was like. She realizes that, by
supposing her first husband may have had affairs, she was
"simply trying to justify Darrow" so that she "could hope to
keep" what she "could not give up" (322). This is true, yet
it is also true that Anna now understands much more about
the male world--and her status, as a woman, as an outsider
to that world—~than she ever had before, Fraser's actually
being faithful or unfaithful notwithstanding.

Anna resents her new insight and becomes extremely
upset with herself for seeking the truth; "...suddenly she
was filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her
disastrous attempt to see. Why had she forced the truth out
of Darrow? If only she had held her tongue nothing need
ever have been known," and "there flashed through her the
longing to return to her old state of fearless ignorance"
(322). Ironically, while George attempts to make others
responsible for his actions, Anna focuses bitterly on
herself just for demanding to rhgm. Discussing Anna's
"probing," Moira Maynard notes the novel's imagery of light
and shadow:

Wharton will describe Anna pulling back veils and
peering through mists to discover truth, while
Darrow, in shadowed hallways and beneath wet
umbrellas, will work to conceal the truth. As
Darrow labors to distort and contain, Anna strains

to see all the way to the heart of the Sophy-

Darrow relationship and its implications....

("Moral Integrity in The Reef" 292)

Anna's new perspective completely undermines the rest

of her interactions with George. She begins to see

manipulative intentions in everything he says and does. She

22

distrusts his explanation of how he was able to return to
Givre, because "he had looked and spoken in the same way
when he had answered her probing questions about Sophy
Viner," and Anna realizes "she would never again know if he
were speaking the truth or not" (324-25). When he had first
returned, Anna noticed that "‘he always knows what to do,'"
but rather than comforting her, "The idea that his tact was
a kind of professional expertness filled her with
repugnance..." (323).6 Later, as they sit together before
the fire, Anna's tranquility is disrupted when she realizes
"that she knew nothing of the inner thoughts of this man who
was sitting by her as a husband might" (330). What had not
mattered with Fraser has become essential with George, since
his duplicity regarding his affair has taught her not to
assume their thoughts will always be in harmony.

The idea that she cannot know George's mind is
extremely threatening to Anna. She begins to question the
depth of his love and worries that he will leave her when
she ages.

He loved her now; she had no doubt of that; but

 

6The phrase "professional expertness" echoes two
earlier uses of "expert" in the novel. George had initially
considered Sophy "expert enough to understand his intention
and spare him the boredom of hesitations and
misinterpretations" (264). Later, Anna wants "to feel
herself less ignorant and inexpert" about such things as
George's affair with Sophy (294). The concept of expertness
underscores both the relevance of George's profession as
diplomatist to his perception of women, and his
miscalculations about these two particular women. Sophy, as
he discovers too late, is not an "expert" at having affairs;
and Anna understands far more than either George or she
herself give her credit for.

23

how could she hope to keep him?....She thought

with a pang of bitterness: "He won't grow any

older because he doesn't feel things; and because

he doesn't, I ghgii..." (318, Wharton's end

ellipsis).

Her musings appear to focus on inadequacies Anna perceives
in herself; she may not grow old gracefully, and "She put no
faith in her own arts" to hold George (331). But Anna did
not have such concerns until she knew about George's affair
with the young and beautiful Sophy, and her real concern is
that she may be unequal to overcoming George's shallowness.
Anna expects to age more quickly as she internalizes all the
pain she associates with George's insensitivity, as she has
already internalized both the knowledge of his affair and
his nonchalance about it.

Anna's anxiety about her appearance is in contrast to
her earlier confidence in George's love, which had made her
feel that "as she was, with her flattened hair, her tired
pallor...he would like her better, feel her nearer, dearer,
more desirable, than in all the splendours she might put on
for him" (124). The irony of this contrast is heightened by
the fact that Sophy's naturalness, to which George had
compared Anna, was one of the major factors that had
attracted him to her (27-28). Anna's fears are especially
poignant in that she is looking ahead to a time when George
may stop loving her, and comparing that time to a present in
which he can have an affair with another woman while he

still loves her.

From the first, Anna's feelings are complicated by her

2H

strong sexual passion for George. This passion overwhelms
her even before she has any hint of his unfaithfulness. A
letter from George gives Anna "a keener edge to every
sense," and following his arrival, she finds that "Every
sensation of touch was thrice alive in her" (82, 103).
Wharton's reference to touch underscores the physical impact
George has on Anna. As McDowell says, "every detail that
connects [Anna] with Darrow becomes sexually charged" (59).
Anna's passion continues to guide her after the revelation
of George's affair makes her wish she could break away from
him completely. When George accuses Anna of not
understanding "‘the strings that pull us,'" she thinks, "‘I
gg understand. I've understood ever since you've been
here!‘"

For she was aware...of sensations so separate from

her romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body

and soul divided against themselves....she

discerned for the first time instincts and

desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and

fro in the dim passages of her mind, and now

hailed each other with a cry of mutiny. (316-17)
But because Anna had come to believe in her outer reserve as
a reflection of her inner self, she views her "sense of
incompleteness, of passionate dependence" on George as
"somehow at variance with her own conception of her
character" (319).

Anna is forced to readjust her thinking about herself
and come to terms with this passion. She realizes "she knew

now" what George and Sophy know about themselves; she "knew

weaknesses and strengths she had not dreamed of, and the

25

deep discord and still deeper complicities between what
thought in her and what blindly wanted..." (320, Wharton's
ellipsis). This passage foretells the difficulty Anna will
have as she tries to leave Darrow. Her past behavior is
echoed in the attempt; when away from him, "she formulated
with a fervent lucidity every point in her imaginary
argument" to break their engagement. But her passion
overcomes these efforts:

...as soon as she was alone with him something

deeper than reason and subtler than shyness laid

its benumbing touch upon her, and the desire to

speak became merely a dim disquietude, through

which his looks, his words, his touch, reached her

as through a mist of bodily pain. (329)

Anna's dilemma is complicated by her awareness that
Sophy has experienced George's passion in a way she as yet
can only imagine. Anna feels "humiliated" that George does
not act upon hgr_passion, "as though his forbearance, his
tacit recognition of her pride, were a slight on other
qualitities she wanted him to feel in her," and she feels
"Exasperated by her helplessness" (343). These feelings
also echo her girlhood response. Watching George with Kitty
Mayne, Anna had felt "a rage of possessorship" and felt that
"none but she had a right" to be looked at as he was looking
at Kitty (86). Her long habit of repression has left Anna
without any words to express her passion to George, no
matter how acutely aware of it she is herself, just as her
upbringing in old New York society had rendered her unable

to express her love for him as a young girl.

The problem is not resolved when George stops her from

26

leaving his room one night, for now Anna fully understands
what she has missed, and the experience makes her extremely
possessive of George. She decides to travel to Paris with
him when he leaves the next day, for "She had an intense
longing to be with him, an almost morbid terror of losing
sight of him for a moment." When he goes to buy a
newspaper, "she felt as though she should never see him
again" (330). Anna's possessiveness and "morbid terror"
hardly suggest healthy sexual fulfillment. Her passion has
simply taken over. "Her scruples were not overcome; but for
the first time their voices were drowned in the tumultuous
rumour of her happiness" (331).

Her scruples do re-surface, however. Even before they
reach Paris, Anna recognizes that her love for George
contains a "new element": "a sort of suspicious tyrannical
tenderness that seemed to deprive it of all serenity" (346).
This is a key sentence, for it indicates that their
relationship must yet end. Anna's physical union with
George cannot alter her knowledge of him, and the next
several pages of the novel continue to catalog her
destructive suspicions and insecurities. When George
becomes impatient with her efforts to discuss Owen, Anna
fears he will "grow indifferent to me as he did to hgr..."
(347, Wharton's ellipsis); when Anna suggests a restaurant
in Paris, she "fancied she saw a shadow on his face," and
concludes that George had been there with Sophy (354); and

after they return from a night at the theatre, Anna thinks

27

about George and Sophy doing the same, and pulls away from
George's touch (357). At this point George tells her
"‘things can't go on like this'" and starts to leave, but
Anna stops him. She simply cannot let George go, and the
novel ends without a definite break between them.7

Interwoven with George's and Anna's points of view is
The Reef's third major character, Sophy Viner. We initially
see Anna through the eyes of a narrator; we first see Sophy,
in the novel's opening chapter, through George's eyes. Like
Anna, Sophy remains unnamed for several paragraphs, but this
is because George cannot remember who she is. The fact that
George cannot name Sophy for so long (although she
immediately remembers his name) symbolizes both his failure
to ever know her beyond a superficial level and the fact
that her story remains largely a mystery throughout the
narrative.

Sophy is a greater abstraction to George than Anna is,
and she will continue to be so in many ways. While Anna is
initially described as "a lady," Sophy is "a helpless female
arm" holding a broken umbrella, then a "young lady," and

"the loveliness in distress under his umbrella," and

 

7Concurring with the view that Anna cannot stay with
George, Moira Maynard says: "Though the novel ends in
ambiguity, there is reason to hope that Anna will be true to
her perception of ‘things as they are.‘ She knows that
George Darrow is charming but untrustworthy in his avoidance
of conflicts that can clarify rather than destroy" (294).
And, as Merryn Williams points out, Anna's deciding she
can't live with Darrow "is partly self-preservation (she has
no answer to the question, ‘And when she ceased to please
him, what then?' [34]) and should not be seen as prudery"
(Six ngen Novelists. 31).

28

ultimately "his companion" (11-12). The progression of
these terms suggests both the progression of their
relationship and George's perception of Sophy, which
undergoes a series of adjustments. In his mind, Sophy
changes from damsel in distress, to a woman associated with
something "unpleasant," to a pitiable "creature," and
finally to prostitute. The something "unpleasant" that
Sophy was part of is the "Murrett mob," a group with which
George had associated but toward which he clearly feels
superior. In another setting he may have dismissed her
completely, but since George feels angry and hurt by Anna,
and because Sophy is both beautiful and "amusing," he does
not yet abandon Sophy (11, 16). George considers himself
Sophy's rescuer, much as he imagines himself rescuing Anna
from the memories of an unsatisfying first marriage.

George's shifting perception of Sophy makes it
difficult for him to categorize her effectively: "She might
be any one of a dozen definable types, or she might-~more
disconcertingly to her companion and more perilously to
herself-~be a shifting and uncrystallized mixture of them
all" (60). But George's failure to mail Sophy's letter
telling the Farlows she is in Paris suggests that the fourth
stage of his perception soon begins to form in his mind. In
fact, George's "persistent sense connecting her with
something uncomfortable and distasteful" (13), which sums up
his attitude toward the Lady Ulrica in his past, also

foretells the sensations in which his brief affair with

29

Sophy will end.

When Sophy and George become lovers, George can
presumably fit her into the category of those women who are
"decidedly not" ladies.a It takes only ten days for him to
grow tired of Sophy, and he laments to himself that rainy
weather has made him think about his "situation" by keeping
him inactive (75).° George considers his drab hotel room in
terms of its "anonymous part," and as he listens to Sophy's
step in the next room, he thinks, "It was strange how much
better he knew it than the person to whom it belonged!" (73,
76) George knows Sophy only as a physical being, a set of
movements; to him she is as anonymous as the hotel room in
which their affair takes place.

George doesn't accord Sophy the intelligence or
adulthood of a woman of his class; he thinks of her as a
"child," even though he knows she has had to support herself
for some time. From her enthusiastic acceptance of a night

at the theatre, he concludes she is "starving" for

 

E'Cynthia Griffin Wolff, commenting on George's
perception of Sophy and his compartmentalization of women
into two major "types," says: "Clearly Sophy will fit into
neither of these comfortable compartments, principally
because they are ways of construing the feminine nature that
make it entirely ancillary to masculine needs" (211).

9In Traveller in the Land of Letters, Janet Goodwyn
makes an interesting observation about the rain. "Wharton
shows Darrow attempting to distance the experience [of his
affair with Sophy] with use of the language of visual art,"
Goodwyn says. "He had never ‘pictured' such a scene, but
once having become involved he loses the power to step
outside it...and the ‘perspective' which he was first able
to maintain on the affair is destroyed by the simple visual
distortion of the rain" (34).

30

amusement, which he can provide (55). By trivializing her
enthusiasm, George discounts Sophy's interest in acting as a
profession, even though he recognizes her interest in
"observing the details" of the play's "interpretation" on
stage and her "sharp apprehension" of "things theatrical"
(46-47). Yet George does distinguish Sophy from Anna on the
basis of class, including Sophy's "avowed acquaintance with
the real business of living" (26). George discounts Sophy's
experiences so that he can treat her condescendingly as a
child, and then he paradoxically remembers Sophy's
experiences so that he can treat her condescendingly as a
lower-class woman, as he does when he later encounters her
as Effie Leath's governess and Owen Leath's fiance.

In a sense, Sophy's desire to act is an inversion of
Anna's visioned world. Just as Anna had retreated into her
imagination to escape from a world where she was known as a
"model of ladylike repression" (83), an acting career would
allow Sophy to escape being dependent on other people to
survive. But Sophy's economic dependence-~the fact that she
must take a governessing position far from Paris, rather
than taking acting lessons--keeps her dream of acting from
coming true. Ironically, it is Anna who has always played a
role in her life, and Sophy who ultimately cannot act the

part of innocence in the presence of her former lover.‘°

 

1°Eugenia DeLamotte says acting is "the center of
nineteenth-century woman's relation to her world" (217).
Although the Wharton character with whom she is concerned is
Lily Bart, the observation also applies to Anna, with her
old New York upbringing.

31

George's Pygmalion impulses are also revived through
Sophy, in whom he sees "the effects of a perfectly fresh
impression on so responsive a temperament," and for whom "he
felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for his
own amusement" (50, my emphasis). George's desire to
entertain Sophy is completely self-serving, as this quote
reveals. He finds it amusing to exercise control over this
young woman, who he considers "intrinsically young" and
malleable (46). George finds Sophy beautiful--"He had
dashed past that to reach Lady Ulrica Crispint"-—and, when
he is first postponed by Anna, "the candid approval of her
eye" helps him recover "his usual sense of being a
personable young man" (15—16). Sophy serves a purpose for
George by assauging his "wounded vanity" in this way, a
purpose that is confirmed by his pleasure at being seen with
her around Paris (46, 48). Yet the limits of his pleasure
are revealed later, as George muses about Anna: "to be loved
by a woman like that made ‘all the difference'...He was a
little tired of experimenting on life..." (127, Wharton's
middle ellipsis). His affair with Sophy, and with Lady
Ulrica before her, is simply an experiment.

Sophy gives George ample opportunity to perceive her
depth. For instance, she recalls that Lady Ulrica was
"‘false from head to foot'" and "‘took apart like a puzzle'"
(1?). Her insight toward this woman George had once pursued
indicates that Sophy is on a different level than Lady

Ulrica. Unlike Undine Spragg in The Customvof the Country,

32

who consciously mimics those around her, Sophy indicates no
desire to make Lady Ulrica her role model. Sophy does,
however, admit to envying her because she had "‘all the
things I've always wanted: clothes and fun and motors, and
admiration and yachting and Paris...'" Sophy tells George:

"And how do you suppose a girl can see that sort

of thing about her day after day, and never wonder

why some women, who don't seem to have any more

right to it, have it all tumbled into their laps,

while others are writing dinner invitations, and

straightening out accounts, and copying visiting

lists, and finishing golf-stockings, and matching

ribbons, and seeing that the dogs get their

sulphur? One looks in one's glass, after all!"

(18)
Sophy speaks more candidly than the young Anna Summers. But
by listing admiration in the middle of a list of objects,
Sophy reveals this part of herself while keeping within the
boundaries of what young girls were supposed to want.n At
this moment, even George sees her face as "no longer a
shallow flower cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that
might give back strange depths of feeling." Yet to explore
those feelings would mean risking greater involvement with
Sophy than he intends, so George pulls back, vaguely
concluding: "the girl had stuff in her-—he saw it..." (18).

Sophy's reaction to the second play George takes her

 

11Compare The House of Mirth, 71-79. Annette
Zilversmit notes that while critics tend to pity Lily for
desiring admiration, this is a perfectly normal thing for a
person to want ("New Directions"). The same applies to
Sophy, who buries her desire for admiration by mentioning it
in a string of "things."

33

to, the Oedi e, reveals another aspect of her character.12
She does not have a formal education through which to view
the production, but she "felt...the ineluctable fatality of
the tale, the dread sway in it of the same mysterious ‘luck'
which pulled the threads of her own small destiny" (59).
This passage recalls Sophy's thoughts about some women
having "it all" while others do not; that, too, is a matter
of luck. Her interest in and enjoyment of the play further
muddies George's perception of Sophy. Himself bored with
the production, he had assumed she was merely feigning
interest and was too polite to express her true opinion (57—
58). In this case, rather than George making a "perfectly
fresh impression" on Sophy, Sophy enables him to see the
play differently. Following her response, he "pierced to
the heart of its significance" and felt anew the play's
"supreme and poignant reality" (59).

There is an additional significance to this passage.
George had just laid his hand on Sophy's, and when he asks
her opinion, his own preoccupation with what he is doing
makes him "only half-aware of his words" (58). And by
pouring out her impressions of the performance, Sophy avoids
acknowledging George's hand on hers—-though the gesture

makes her blush. Since George is of a different social

 

‘2Discussing the novel's "entanglements," Tuttleton
says, "Although the blood relations between these characters
are utterly discrete, it is not accidental that Darrow and
Sophy attend a performance of Oedipe in Paris, for Mrs.
Wharton intends to...offer a contemporary novel based on
‘the ineluctable fatality of the [ancient] tale..." (465).

34

class than Sophy, and therefore no one she would perceive as
a possible mate for herself, it is no wonder Sophy disclaims
against marriage shortly afterward. She tells George, "‘Oh,
I never mean to marry,'" partly because no one desirable has
proposed to her, but also because: "‘I'm not so sure that I
believe in marriage. You see I'm all for self-development
and the chance to live one's life. I'm awfully modern, you
know'" (61). In response, George ponders, "It was just when
she proclaimed herself most awfully modern that she struck
him as most helplessly backward..." (61). "Backward" is
George's term to describe attitudes he does not understand
because they don't fit neatly into his view that women are
made to please men.

Yet Sophy's proclamation does seem defensive. She may
not believe in marriage as it has been presented and offered
to her, but her rhetoric and her later engagement to Owen
Leath suggest she would like to. She simply does not have
the faith in marriage that Anna does. And Sophy is
"backward" in a way George would never understand. As
Ammons says, Sophy is "in bondage to the past" like other
Wharton heroines because, while she is "modern, self-
confident, practical,"

She is also completely unable to free herself from

certain traditional notions and impediments. Her

lack of marketable skills, her vulnerability to

the double standard, and her own romantic

infatuation with George Darrow keep her from

32ining authority over her own life. (Argument

Paradoxically, while Sophy's feelings for George show her to

35

be bound to the past in one way, she fights a tradition that
separates love and marriage. Because of her affair with
George, and because he did provide an escape for her
(however temporary), Sophy has a feeling for him which she,
using the language society gives her, interprets as love.*3
In this sense, tradition does hold Sophy. Yet she, knowing
George would never marry her, renounces the alternative:
marriage with Owen, who she ultimately realizes she does not
love.

Sophy is vulnerable not only to the way the double
standard condemns women who have affairs, but exonerates
men; she is also vulnerable to a woman's need for the
security of marriage. Initially, she becomes engaged to
Owen even though she is not sure she loves him. She credits
George with warning her "‘That I'd be miserable if I married
a man I didn't love,'" and when George chides her for not
telling Owen sooner, Sophy answers, "‘I told him as soon as
I knew'" (260). Sophy had understood that marriage provided
her best chance to permanently escape poverty. This does
not mean Sophy is cold or calculating; she is forced to
depend on someone, and Owen is a "good catch." Her

financial vulnerability makes her decision to face her

 

13The scene in which Sophy tells Darrow she wants to
"‘keep you all to myself'" in her heart is, Maynard says,
"Wharton depicting neurotic need": "Sophy's behavior is not
a frank facing of realities; it is a blind ignoring of
reality and the choosing of an unusable past over a viable,
if unromantic future" (289). This is an astute observation,
but Sophy's attempt to address her feelings rather than
simply accept society's limited options--as the young Anna
Summers had done-—is nevertheless commendable.

36

feelings for George, and her lack of feelings for Owen,
quite impressive. Despite a tremendous cost to herself,
Sophy cannot maintain the pretext that she knew George only
casually.

Anna has a very different perspective of Sophy than
George does. She has a natural sympathy for Sophy, despite
their difference in age and social status. Before Anna
knows of the affair, she encourages Sophy to be open with
her and to trust her.

She had, in truth, so many reasons for wanting

Sophy to like her: her love for Owen, her

solicitude for Effie, and her ogn sense of the

Girl's fine mettle. She had always felt a

romantic and almost humble admiration for those

members of her sex who, from force of will, or the

constraint of circumstances, had plunged into the
conflict from which fate had so persistently

excluded her. (236, my emphasis)“

Anna does not yet know that part of this "conflict" is
Sophy's sexual involvement with a man on whose kindness she
has depended, and to whom Anna happens to be engaged.

Rather than denigrating Sophy as a person of inferior social
rank, Anna recognizes her as another woman and as one who is

admirable for having faced life in a way Anna has not had to

do. It is because of this understanding that Anna can

 

1"Similarly, Anna views Owen's "humours" as "the voice
of her secret rebellions" and, we are told, "her tenderness
to her step—son was partly based on her severity toward
herself. As he had the courage she had lacked, so she meant
him to have the chances she had missed; and every effort she
made for him helped to keep her own hopes alive" (96).
Although Anna attributes the difference between them to her
lack of courage, it is apparent that Owen can rebel because
he is a man. By attempting to support his choice of a
bride, Anna is in a sense trying to live vicariously through
him.

37

promote Sophy's marriage to her step-son Owen, despite his
grandmother Madame de Chantelle's disapproval. Anna also
trusts Sophy with her little girl; she comments to George on
how Effie "‘expands'" when she is with Sophy, who is "‘gay
and kind and human'" (222).

Even after Anna knows Sophy has had an affair with
George, she still acknowledges the similarities between
herself and Sophy. Meditating on her own passion for George
and the passion on which Sophy had acted, Anna "thought of
the girl with a mingling of antipathy and confidence. It
was humiliating to her pride to recognize kindred impulses
in a character which she would have liked to feel completely
alien to her." Yet Anna also has an "absolute trust“ in
Sophy because she had "instantly obeyed the voice of her
heart when it bade her part from the one [Owen] and serve
the other [George]" (320-21). Anna wants to see Sophy
completely as "other" but cannot, any more than she can
condemn Sophy but exonerate George. Both women have
experienced intense passion for George. The major
difference is simply that Sophy has acted on her passion,
while at this point, Anna has not.

Anna ultimately sees Sophy as the only one who can
"save" her, and plans to regain her serenity by finding
Sophy and telling her that she is giving up George (361).

In effect, Anna is trying to create in herself the firmness
she has noted in Sophy by announcing her resolution to

Sophy. But when she meets Sophy's sister (who is evidently

38

a prostitute), Anna's empathy and admiration for Sophy
disintigrate. She sees in Mrs. Birch's "trivial" and garish
face "a suggestion...of what Sophy Viner might, with the
years...become" (351-52). SOphy becomes in Anna's mind-—as
in George's--a type: "not lady," prostitute.15 Only by
viewing Sophy in this way, it appears, can Anna fully
separate herself from the "other" woman.

Mrs. Birch is a red herring, however; her presence
leads the reader to disregard Wharton's hints that Sophy and
Owen elope. In addition to causing the reader to question
the narrative's otherwise favorable characterization of
Sophy, Mrs. Birch tells Anna that Sophy has "‘gone to India
with Mrs. Murrett'" (352). These two things appear to
settle Sophy's future: at best she will pay for her
integrity by remaining a dependent of Mrs. Murrett's; at
worst she will become, as Anna suspects, a prostitute. But
when Mrs. Birch said Sophy had left "suddenly" the night
before (the same night Owen left for Spain) Anna had
immediately thought, "Could it be that the girl had tricked
them all and gone with Owen?" (351) Anna is easily

dissuaded from her suspicion, just as she had been happy to

 

1L"Both Lawson and Ammons point out that the effect of
the novel's final scene is to show how much Sophy has
overcome. Ammons says this scene "implicitly admires rather
than punishes Sophy Viner: against all odds, she has managed
so far to avoid her sister's fate" (Argument 91). Lawson,
while not agreeing that Wharton intended this effect, says
that the "overkill" of the final scene "may well induce the
modern reader to sympathize with Sophy...because she has the
integrity to emerge from such an environment as an honest,
attractive person....[who] instinctively tells the truth,
however painful for herself" (59-60).

39

dismiss her early suspicions about George's involvement with
Sophy.

Yet the possibility that Owen and Sophy elope would
also explain Owen's strange behavior when Anna visits him,
shortly before he leaves for Spain. It is so dark in his
room that "his features were barely discernable," and when
Anna turns on a lamp, Owen cries, "‘Oh don't--I hate the
light!‘" (335-36) Though he blames an attack of neuralgia
for wanting to keep the room dark, he may simply be afraid
Anna will know the truth if she looks in his eyes. That
this is so is corroborated by Owen's asking Anna not to come
back up to his room when she returns with his neuralgia
medicine--perhaps Sophy will be there——and by his
unwillingness to say when he will return from Spain. Not
yet suspecting anything else, Anna attributes Owen's
behavior and the "veil" she senses between them to the idea
that Owen has discovered George's affair with Sophy. "‘He
knows, he knows...‘ she said to herself" (336, Wharton's
ellipsis).

Wharton's hinting at an elopement expands the
possibilities for how Sophy's story may end. But even if
the reader assumes that Sophy is with Owen, she has not
achieved a traditional heroine's resolution; because she is
not in love with Owen, Sophy has at best achieved another
kind of compromise. The very possibility that Sophy marries
Owen makes Anna's view that Sophy had shown the greater

integrity by breaking her engagement extremely ironic,

40

especially considering that Anna—~with her searing passion
but agonizing distrust for George--cannot make such

compromises.16

 

1“Tuttleton discusses Anna's "romantic ideal of love
iand emotional and sexual fulfillment that is unsullied by
(desecrating compromises," and concludes: "Can such an ideal
lae preferable to an actual man who, however needed, cannot

(zomplete the whole woman? I suggest that the novel commends
izhis view..." (471).

 

 

 

Chapter Two
Undine's Unending Story in

The Custom of the Country

Wharton's The Customrof the Country (1913) presents
Undine Spragg, a woman whose story "ends" in marriage—-over
and over again. Wharton tears away the obscuring veils so
prevalent in The Reef and sheds a glare of publicity on the
characters in her next novel, creating the illusion that all
is revealed. Even the closely guarded secret of Undine's
first marriage, to Elmer Moffatt, becomes public knowledge
when it can no longer hurt her. But while Wharton allows
the reader relatively full knowledge of Undine's story,
those characters who represent old society--Ralph Marvell
and Raymond de Chelles--1et themselves be dazzled by Undine,
rather than concerning themselves with her history, with the
result that they remain ignorant of her story until it is
too late.‘ Just as George Darrow attempts to categorize
Anna and Sophy, the men in The Custom of the Country operate
according to serious misconceptions of Undine; both Ralph

and Raymond assume she wishes to adopt their values.

 

1Janet Goodwyn considers The Custom_9f the Country
Wharton's "movement into the twentieth century" both because
Undine--with her lack of a "sense of the past"--is
"unprecedented," and because in this novel, Wharton "moves
away from the Jamesian model with which she experimented in
The Reef" (Traveller in the Land of Letters 38).

41

42

Conversely, Undine makes assumptions about both of these
men, based on her gossip—page reading and on an inflated
sense of her own power, which cause her to become
disillusioned with them as well.

The Custgmrof the Country. unlike The Reef, begins with
the heroine; "‘Undine Spragg'" are the first words of the
novel. Undine's immediate introduction is appropriate not
only because she is the central character in the novel, but
because she is completely egocentric. She perceives other
characters solely in relation to herself. Wharton explores
this egocentrism through Undine's love of mirrors and with
imagery of light. Undine's "delight" in dressing up and
playing "‘lady'" in front of a mirror "had outlasted
childhood" and as an adult, "she still practised the same
secret pantomime" (22). Preparing for a dinner at the
fashionable Mrs. Fairford's, Undine yields to the "joy of
dramatizing her beauty" and practices her "incessant
movements" because "she thought it the correct thing to be
animated in society" (22). The passage reveals Undine's
vanity, but more importantly, it anticipates her way of
dealing with the world. As the narrator says,

Undine was fiercely independent and yet

passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise

every one by her dash and originality, but she

could not help modelling herself on the last

person she met.... (19)

She is imitative in both senses of the word: copying and
artificial. Undine mirrors people externally but fails to

improve her inner self. Her concern with the external,

 

 

 

43

established so early in the novel, anticipates Undine's
constant search for new and better mirrors as she moves from
one segment of society to another.2

Later, when Undine has a dealer come to appraise the
Chelles tapestries, she looks at them "as complacently as
though they had been mirrors reflecting her own image"
(529). The tapestries are symbolic of mirrors for Undine
because their sale could buy her several seasons in Paris,
where her beauty would be reflected in, and appreciated by,
the society she craves. Undine needs this type of
reflection because she relies on the "mirror" of others'
views as much as she relies on literal mirrors; lacking any
sense of self-reflection, the "image of herself in other
minds" is "her only notion of self—seeing" (401). Even as a
girl Undine had craved the approval of others; she had
thrived on "the public triumph which was so necessary to her
personal enjoyment" (549). Discussing the role of publicity
in Wharton's earlier The House of Mirth (1905), Amy Kaplan
says that Lily Bart "depends on the mirror of the gaping mob
to maintain her identity" (102). Like Lily, Undine defines
herself through mirrors-~both literal and metaphorical. But
in The Custom of the Country, Wharton shows what happens

when members of the "gaping mob" break into the upper class.

 

2Ironically, Undine's "originality" is mostly comprised
of switching between models. Margaret McDowell comments,
"when Undine changes her life style by changing her friends
and husbands, she does so in order to find more significant
mirrors for her beauty and untried ranges of behavior to
copy" (80).

an

At the same time, just as a mirror can reflect only
what is within its range, so Undine can "see" only those who
are reflected in her mirror, those who are with her and who
complement the image she sees of herself. Her first night
in her own opera box, Undine perceives herself as reflecting
all of society; she is the "core" of the auditorium, "the
sentient throbbing surface which gathered all the shafts of
light into a centre" (60). At Laura Fairford's dinner,
Undine finds that "All was blurred and puzzling...in this
world of half-lights, half-tones, eliminations and
abbreviations; and she felt a violent longing to brush away
the cobwebs and assert herself as the dominant figure of the
scene" (37).8 Later, Undine is surprised to learn how much
has happened to Elmer Moffatt while she has been living at
Saint Desert, because "It never occurred to her that other
people's lives went on when they were out of her range of
vision..." (412). In this sense she is like an infant,
unaware of anything it cannot see.

Undine's egocentrism is further suggested by her
tendency to blame others whenever something goes wrong.
Although Undine believes "she was ready enough to
acknowledge her own mistakes," she rarely seems to think she

had made any (58). Wharton establishes this characteristic

 

aCarol Wershoven notes the prevalence of light imagery
in The Custom of the Country and comments, "As Undine
travels through the various classes she brings that glaring
radiance with her, and casts a hard light on realities
careflllly evaded by the members of each group” (61).
Similarly, McDowell says that Undine "illuminates the
weaknesses of each group as she mirrors them" (79).

 

 

45

with the relatively trivial episode of the opera box.
Undine "exulted" when her father bought her a box for every
other Friday, after he had initially refused to buy her one
at all. But on her first night in this hard-won opera box,
Undine laments, "now she saw that it might but emphasize
one's exclusion. And she was burdened with the box for the
rest of the season! It was really stupid of her father to
have exceeded his instructions" (68).

Later, married to Ralph Marvell but enjoying the
flattery of society artist Claud Popple, Undine reflects:
"Popple's homage seemed the subtlest proof of what Ralph
could have made of her if only he had ‘really understood'
her. It was but another step to ascribe all her past
mistakes to the lack of such understanding..." (190). And,
"Since it was never her habit to accuse herself of such
mistakes" as her decision to marry Ralph, "it was inevitable
that she should gradually come to lay the blame" on him
(193). Undine pities herself for marrying Ralph. "She
found a poignant pleasure...in the question: ‘What does a
young girl know of life?'" (193—94) The question is ironic
for Undine, who had been married once before and engaged
three times.

Undine attributes all her problems to external sources
because she believes the world owes her happiness. She
considers herself "essentially peace—loving" but unable to
live in harmony with her parents because they are

"unreasonable":

46

Ever since she could remember there had been

"fusses" about money; yet she and her mother had

always got what they wanted....It was therefore

natural to conclude that there were ample funds to

draw upon, and that Mr. Spragg's occasional

resistances were merely due to an imperfect

understanding of what constituted the necessities

of life. (45)
In Undine's eyes, anything that interferes with her will is
unreasonable. She refuses to acknowledge any need for
moderation; such things as opera boxes have become her
"rights" simply because she has never been denied them (44).

Wharton explains the Spraggs' oversolicitousness by
referring to the death of their only other two children by
typhoid fever (80). Undine is the ultimate stereotypical
only child; she is twice as spoiled because she is all her
parents have left of their three offspring. Yet early in
life, Undine underwent the "terrible initiation" of
discovering that others were not content with the things she
had thought worth having. She came to believe that "There
was something better beyond" and that "it was always her
fate to find out just too late about the ‘something beyond'"
(54). When Undine subsequently regrets accepting money
from Peter Van Degen, she reflects: "What she wanted was
not a hand-to-mouth existence of precarious intrigue: to one
with her gifts the privileges of life should come openly"
(234). This is the message Undine has gotten from a mother
who "seemed to have transferred her whole personality to her
child" (11), and a father who allows her to cajole him into
the most impractical expenditures. The feeling that she is

always missing out on something, plus her attitude that life

47

should treat her in a privileged way, keeps Undine from ever
being fully satisfied with what she has.

Because she had learned early that money was always
available, Undine continues to assume that whenever someone
fails to meet her "needs," that person does not care about
her. When her third husband, Raymond, refuses to sell his
ancestral tapestries, Undine pouts to Elmer Moffatt: "‘he'd
rather see me starve than part with one of his grand—
father's snuff—boxes'" (559). This single complaint
indicates the way Undine glorifies her problems and
trivializes others' positions. Undine's idea of starving is
going without one more expensive dress, or not taking over
the top floor of the Chelles httgi in Paris. In contrast,
she equates the Chelles tapestries, extremely valuable
heirlooms whose "‘history has been published,'" with "snuff-
boxes" (530).

Due to her extreme egocentrism, Undine views even her
own son as a rival for her "rights." For instance, "Partly
as a result" of her financial "excursions" with the money
she has borrowed from Van Degen,

she had a ‘nervous breakdown'...and her physician

having ordered massage and a daily drive it became

necessary to secure Mrs. Heeny's attendance and to
engage a motor by the month. Other unforseen
expenses...were added to by a severe illness of

little Paul's....During these days Ralph's anxiety

drove him to what seemed to Undine foolish

excesses of expenditure.... (229)

Undine happily pampers her own illness (which the passage

suggeests is feigned), but resents money spent on her son's

illnerss as "foolish." Conversely, Undine attempts to use a

 

 

48

later illness of Paul's to her benefit. Before she and
Raymond leave Paris one season, "a doctor had been found to
say that Paul...was in urgent need of sea air" because
Undine does not want to return to Saint Desert (491, my
emphasis). And when Paul had missed his own birthday party
because Undine had forgotten it, she showed no regret for
his disappointment. Instead, she was irritated at finding
herself "put in the wrong" with her in-laws (220).“

Undine is similarly self-centered in her attitude
toward her parents. As the Marquise de Chelles, Undine
"felt no compunction in continuing to accept an undiminished
allowance," although her allowance breaks her parents
financially. She does feel "a sentimental pity for her
parents," however. "Aside from all interested motives, she
wished for their own sakes that they were better off."
Ironically, among Undine's supposedly disinterested motives
is the idea that "renewed prosperity would at least have
procured them the happiness of giving her what she wanted"
(562). Undine can't imagine that her parents might have
interests outside herself.

The harshest indicator of Undine's selfishness,
however, is that she views Ralph's death in terms of its
financial advantages. His suicide:

brought about a sudden change in her situation.
She was now no longer a divorced woman struggling

 

‘Ralph is not entirely blameless in the birthday party
incident. He is more than an hour late himself, although
that is because he "‘stayed down town to make provision for
[Paul's] future birthdays'" (209).

49

to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for her

remarriage, but a widow whose conspicuous beauty

and independent situation made her the object of

lawful aspirations. (483)

A subsequent line suggests that Undine does take some

responsibility for Ralph's death: "she continued to wish

that she could have got what she wanted without having had

to pay that particular price for it" (487). But the

appearance is deceptive. Undine is actually feeling sorry

for herself, as her reaction to Paul's inheritance confirms:
she wished she could have got [the money] some

other way--she hated the thought of it as one more

instance of the perverseness with which things she

was entitled to always came to her as if they had

been stolen. (488)

Undine turns Ralph's tragedy, and the windfall which comes
to her through Paul as a result, into an occasion to pity
herself.

Undine's attitude toward the male business world also
reflects her self-absorbed perspective. Wharton makes it
clear early in the novel that Undine does not want to
participate in that world. When Mr. Spragg tries to reason
with her about her expenditures,

Her eyes grew absent-minded, as they always did

when [her father] alluded to business. that was

man's province; and what did men go "downtown" for

but to bring back the spoils to their women? (44)
This passage is a clue to much of Undine's subsequent

behavior. She expects to be lavishly supported, without

being bothered with the details of the way money is earned.5

 

aElizabeth Ammons discusses the way Undine's idea of
marriage fits Thorstein veblen's description of "the
function of the rich man's wife, who should be ‘supported in

.__‘.__-,_

50

Wharton confirms Undine's view when, preparing for her
wedding to Ralph, Undine and her mother feel “secure in
their invariable experience that, once ‘father' had been
convinced of the impossibility of evading their demands, he
might be trusted to satisfy them by means with which his
womenkind need not concern themselves" (127).

Undine's persistent ignorance of the business world
cannot be wholly attributed to men's attempts to shelter
her. Ralph does initially try to assume Mr. Spragg's role
of providing everything Undine wants, but he soon realizes
that her "disregard for money may imply not the willingness
to get on without it but merely a blind confidence that it
will somehow be provided" (149). When he tries to explain
their financial situation, however, Undine objects; “it was
always hard to make her see why circumstances could not be
bent to her wishes" (171). Charles Bowen, a minor character
who watches Undine from a distance, says she is a
”‘perfectly monstrous result of the system'" in which
"‘money and motors and clothes are simply the big bribe'" a
woman is paid "‘for keeping out of some man's wayt'" (208)
But this assessment does not apply to Undine. She instead
refuses to understand so that she can avoid taking
responsibility for her expenses.

Wharton shows that Undine is perfectly capable of

 

idleness by her owner. She is useless and expensive, and

she is.consequently valuable as evidence of his pecuniary

strength’" (Argument 113). But of Undine’s husbands only

Elmer, who sees her as another item to collect, adheres to
this.view.

 

 

s-b_._--.-.

H

51

understanding finances when doing so is to her advantage.
From Moffatt's scheme to buy some real estate from Ralph's
firm, Undine "finally extracted, and clung to, the central
fact that if the ‘deal went through' it would mean a
commission of forty thousand dollars to Marvell's firm, of
which something over a fourth would come to Ralph" (251).
Undine's face is "alive with interest" when Ralph later
discusses the deal with her, and she wants to know if he
intends to make the sale (255).

Her carefully maintained ignorance of the male business
world is one aspect of the business Undine ggg§_understand:
marriage. Elizabeth Ammons, discussing the way Undine makes
marriage her business, says her "avaricious approach" to it
is "simply realistic" in her world (Argument 101). Ammons
goes on to describe the ways in which Undine's business
world parallels her father's:

Wall Street is the field of battle for the modern

robber baron, and although his female counter-

part...is denied that battleground, she is given

her own stock exchange: the institution of

marriage in which she herself is the stock

exchanged. To create her empire, she invests

herself in the right marriage--an enterprise

Undine understands and embraces. (107)

This enterprise requires frequent re-adjustments in Undine's
thinking. For instance, she initially perceives Ralph as "a
little fellow" whose primary distinction was being in the
same room with the more overtly-stylish Claud Popple (5).
After learning of Ralph's social status, however, Undine

decides he is "so much less negligible than his brilliant

friend" (23), an assessment which is followed by a new

52

appreciation for Ralph's physical appearance (69). Undine

utimately convinces herself that she is in love with Ralph:
"It was pleasant...to meet Ralph's grey eyes, with that new
look in them, and to feel that she had kindled it" (92).

But this feeling "was only part of her larger pleasure
in the general homage to her beauty" at her engagement
dinner, and "in the sensations of interest and curiosity
excited by everything about her, from the family portraits
overhead to the old Dagonet silver on the table--which were
to be hers too, after all!" (92) Love, for Undine, means
both power over another, a type of "possessorship” (97), and
possessing things. At this dinner Undine plays one of her
major roles. She tells herself that the "part" of a young
woman "very much in love, and a little confused and subdued
by the newness and intensity of the sentiment" was "not hard
to play, for she mgr in love, of course" (91). But Wharton
makes it clear that she i§_playing a role; she feels none of
this intensity of emotion toward Ralph, as a later reference
to "her first impersonal affection" for him confirms (226,
my emphasis). Undine is--and remains--completely detached
from such feelings, as Ralph eventually realizes.

Undine suffers from none of the sexual upheaval that
characterizes so many of Wharton's women characters, from
Anna Leath and Sophy Viner to Kate Clephane. For Undine,
men's sexual feelings are simply factors to consider in her
efforts to form ever more socially and financially rewarding

partnerships with them. Placing Wharton in the context of

53

nineteenth-century ideology about "woman's nature," Mary
Suzanne Schriber argues that "Undine's absolute indifference
[to sex] deconstructs the culture's frame of sexual
reference, rendering it meaningless," because it subverts
the patriarchal standard that says "a woman's sexuality is
her pearl beyond price" (Gender 177). Wharton symbolizes
that Undine is outside the sexual frame of reference by
showing that stereotypes of light and dark women do not
apply to her. While fair, light-haired women in literature
are traditionally innocent, and dark-haired women are
sexually "experienced," Undine is alternately referred to as
light or dark. With her red hair, Undine can be either the
“brunette" "bit of flesh and blood“ that Popple contrasts
with the blond Clare, or a "fair haired" "lady," as de
Chelles first sees her (72, 276).

Undine is also detached from any sense of commitment to
marriage. Wharton warns the reader--and Ralph's entire
family-~of this attitude when, at their engagement dinner,
Undine flippantly remarks that her friend Mabel Lipscomb
will probably "‘get a divorce pretty soon'" because her
husband "‘isn't in the right set, and I think Mabel realizes
she'll never really get anywhere till she gets rid of him'"
(94). Janet Goodwyn says of Undine, “She is a modern
version of the water-nymph who could only gain a soul by
marrying a mortal; Undine marries mortals enough but never
commits herself to the act and so remains soul-less" (39).

Her talent for rationalizing helps Undine evade her

54

true motive for marrying Ralph. Dismayed that he will be
expected to support the newlyweds, Mr. Spragg suggests that
Undine break her engagement. She wonders, "Did he suppose
she was marrying for mghgy? Didn't he see it was all a
question...of the kind of people she wanted to ‘go with'?"
(123) Even if Undine's lack of concern for money is
accepted, she clearly expects Ralph to serve a purpose:
getting her into society. She is not marrying him for love.
The following passage confirms that Undine it marrying for
money, as well. When Mr. Spragg says that if she's in love
with Ralph, "‘you and he won't mind beginning in a small
way,'" Undine reacts by theatrically tearing off her
engagement ring and threatening to tell Ralph, "‘I thought
he was a rich man, and now I see I'm mistaken---'" (124-25).
Ralph initially fails to understand the extent of
Undine's egocentrism because he, too, is egocentric.“ Just
as George Darrow perceives of women as "designed" to please
men, Ralph perceives of Undine in relation to himself,
rather than as a separate person who actually has very
little in common with him. Based on a conversation with
Undine's mother, Ralph concludes that the Spraggs "had been
‘plain people'" and that this "drew them much closer to the

Dagonet ideals than any sham elegance in the past tense."

 

6I am primarily concerned with how Ralph perceives
Undine. Several critics have responded to Ralph in greater
depth. See, for instance, Collins, Ammons (Argument 112-
14), and Stein (244-46). McDowell discusses how Wharton
uses Ralph's perspective to delineate Undine as "more than a
stereotype" (81).

55

From here, Ralph makes the leap to speculating, ”To save her
[Undine] from van Degen and Van Degenism: was that really to
be his mission--the ‘call' for which his life had obscurely
waited?" (82)

At first, Ralph thinks he judges Undine clearly; he
recognizes "her crudity and her limitations," but somehow
views them as "a part of her grace and her persuasion" (83).
He assumes Undine shares her mother's "virgin innocence"
and "unaffected frankness" and can yet be spared from
"swell[ing] the ranks of the cheaply fashionable" (81-82).
But Undine is frank because "some intuition had already told
her that frankness was the tone to take with him" (69).
Wharton makes it clear that Ralph falls in love simply
because he is ready to; "his faith in the great adventure"
of romance to come in his life is what “made him so easy a
victim when love had at last appeared clad in the attributes
of romance..." (83). Having lost his first love, Clare,
because he waited too long, Ralph is quick to assume Undine
is suitable for him.

Ralph's egocentric view is also apparent in his attempt
to change Undine.’ While he recognizes her "sensitiveness
to new impressions" and "obvious lack of any sense of

relative values," he dwells on these characteristics as

 

7Gary Lindberg notes, ”what he is really trying to do
is not to rescue her from social submersion but to protect
her from a particular class that he abhors,” and ”what most
disturbs him is not her general moral deficiencies but her
specific obtuseness to the delicacies that inform his own
class" (73).

56

enhancing Undine's vulnerability, rather than as negative
qualities to consider before deciding to marry her. He
envisions her as a "lovely rock—bound Andromeda" and
imagines himself "whirling down on his winged horse...to cut
her bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue"
away from the "devouring monster Society careering up to
make a mouthful of her..." (84). He takes on the project of
rescuing and protecting, he assumes, an as yet unspoiled
daughter of the Invaders. In discussing The Custom of the
Country, Ammons comments on Ralph's Pygmalion attitudes: "A
would-be artist who has never been able to finish a single
work, he sees Undine as raw material for his creative
impulse" (Arqgment 112). Ralph, however, has always been a
passive artist (he lies under trees and waits for poetic
words to drop on him like leaves), and the project of
molding a living being into his desired shape is far more
than he can handle.8

Undine initially has no idea of Ralph's view and is
puzzled, during their engagement, by his "reluctance to
introduce her to the Van Degen set” (93). His attitudes
continue to cause frustration for Undine, who expects
certain rights as a partner in the marriage-business. She
is afraid Ralph will thwart her growing friendship with

Peter Van Degen, a fellow "Invader" who has become a part of

 

aAs Ammons concludes, Ralph mistakenly "assumes that
Undine wants to be lifted and will adopt his unostentatious
way of life, his taste for reserved people, and his educated
aestheticism," and that she "wants to become...both the
object and the nurture of his creativity" (Argument 113).

57

old New York society through his marriage to Ralph's cousin
Clare. Undine muses, "It was hard to be criticized for
every grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do
the reaching for her!" She "felt herself trapped, deceived”
because, she realizes, Ralph will "not achieve the quick
rise to affluence which was man's natural tribute to woman's
merits" (227). In Undine's view, Ralph fails the
partnership because he does not support her adequately,
although he does stop trying to control her activities.

Alexandra Collins suggests that Undine's relationship
with her father influences her view of Ralph:

From her father, Undine derives her energy and her

pleasure in complicated manoeuvers designed to

advance her own social position. She wheedles him

into giving her money....In contrast, Ralph's

refusal to bring home enough money to satisfy her

desire for luxury, and his inability to understand

her desire to barter for what she wants...prove

disappointing. (205)
Ralph does not refuse to provide enough money, however; he
simply does not have the business acumen which would enable
him to do so. Finding that their combined allowances were
not enough to meet his and Undine's expenses, Ralph had left
his "profession"--a seat in a law office--and had joined a
real estate firm (215). But he perceives that ”his
business" is to defend Undine from her "weakness" for Van
Degenism and "lift her above it" (177), not to provide her
with unlimited funds. His efforts to do both cause Ralph to
develop the same symptoms of stress as Undine's father;

within a few years of their marriage, he is characterized by

“anxious eyes" and ”the strain of long fatigue" brought on

58

by the "incessant struggle to make enough money" for Undine
(209, 218).

Ralph treats Undine as he does because he perceives her
as a child. As Undine begins to resist him, Ralph maintains
his purpose of protecting her. He realizes she can be
inconsistent, as when she complains that hr hastened their
marriage. But he is "still enchanted" by her and, when
Undine complains about being hidden away in Italy on their
honeymoon, he says, "‘We'll go wherever you please--you make
every place the one place'...as _t hleQL_ humouring an
irresistible child" (145, my emphasis). Ralph's tendency to
view Undine as a child is consistent with his desire to
protect her; if he thought of Undine as an adult, he would
realize that she can function without his constant guidance.
Discussing their relationship, Susan Wolstenholme points
out:

Because Undine is tyrannical and demanding,

readers have generally perceived her as less

sympathetic than Ralph, who is soft, tender, and

vulnerable. But taken together, the two

characters represent the two attributes of

childhood. (101)

As Ralph takes Undine into his arms, "he felt her resign
herself like a tired child" (152). But again, this is his
perception; the context reveals that Undine is only
”resigned" in allowing him to hold her. "She had never
shown any repugnance to his tenderness, but such response as
it evoked was remote and Ariel-like..." (152).

Finding her response not up to the level of his

passion, Ralph briefly emphasizes Undine as goddess. He

59

daydreams about the “pot-boiler“ novel he plans to write and
thinks, "Did not the worshipper always heap the rarest
essences on the altar of his divinity?" (155) A goddess
does not need protection from a mortal, however, and Ralph
soon returns to his view of Undine as a child.9 He "told
himself that there is always a Narcissus-element in youth,
and that what Undine really enjoyed was the image of her own
charm mirrored in the general admiration" (157). Because he
considers this a characteristic of youth, rather than an
intricate part of Undine's personality, Ralph expects her to
outgrow her need for general admiration. "With her quick
perceptions and adaptabilities she would soon learn to care
more about the quality of the reflecting surface..." (157).
As Ralph becomes disillusioned with Undine and
recognizes her "instinct of adapting herself to whatever
company she was in," he becomes concerned about "what her
ignorance might expose her to" (160). When Undine says she
can choose her own friends, Ralph patronizingly responds,
"‘No, you can't, you foolish child. You know nothing of
this society you're in...'" (161). He is "exasperated by
what seemed a wilful pretense of ignorance" in Undine's
accepting the companionship of the notorious Madame

Adelschein. But it is old New York's hypocrisy that is

 

°James Bailey has discussed the resonances of Undine's
name and Wharton's use of the undine, or water sprite, myth
in The Cgstomfiof the Country. Bailey notes that while in
the myth the undine must relinquish her power in order to
become mortal, Undine Spragg wants the "best bargain: love
that empowers" ("Wharton's Water Sprite”).

6O

highlighted by his rebuke. Ralph explains, "‘The Adelschein
goes about in a place like this (St. Moritz] because it's
nobody's business to stop her; but the women who tolerate
her here would drop her like a shot if she set foot on their
ground.'” Undine draws the logical conclusion and responds,
"‘Well, that's easy enough: I can drop her if she comes to
New York'" (160-63).

Ralph is upset that she "had so amply shown him her
ability to protect herself" and by "the perfect functioning
of her instinct of self-preservation" (163). He takes no
pleasure in his wife's ability to make her own choices,
since it means she will not be easily molded. For the same
reason, Ralph dislikes Undine's practicality. He is upset
by her suggestion that they ask the Marvells for money,
ostensibly because "it was always she who made the practical
suggestion, hit the nail of expediency on the head. No
sentimental scruple made the blow waver or deflected her
resolute aim" (165). Yet as Carol Wershoven notes in 1hr
Female Intruder in the Novels of Edith Wharton, "since the
Spraggs have made a life-long commitment to ‘helping out'
Ralph," Undine's suggestion ”hardly seems an audacious
request” (63). Ralph cannot accept his wife's ability to
take charge where he has, in her opinion, failed.

When he tells Undine that they cannot afford to stay in
Paris any longer because the return passage to New York is
so expensive, Undine secures an invitation on van Degen's

yacht. She tells Ralph so with a "laugh of triumph,”

   

 

61

obviously proud of her resourcefulness. "‘I'm not such a
fool as you pretendt'" she exclaims (176). Undine is
understandably confused by Ralph's horrified response to her
news, just as Ralph is surprised when she does not
immediately bow to his will in the matter.

He was used to women who, in such cases, yielded

as a matter of course to masculine judgments: if

one pronounced a man "not decent” the question was

closed. But it was Undine's habit to ascribe all

interference with her plans to personal

motives.... (179)

Still, Ralph believes he is "learning to influence her
through her social instincts" and expects Undine to drop Van
Degen once back in New York (180). But Undine does not do
so, and subsequent events show just how little influence
Ralph has had over her.

By the time of Undine's pregnancy, Ralph has
relinquished enough of his illusions to notice her true
reaction. He is struck by the "chill of her tone" as she
bewails the year she will lose to her pregnancy, and he
perceives her thoughts about "the approach of illness,
anxiety, and expense, and of the general unnecessary
disorganization of their lives." He responds "bitterly" to
Undine, but Ralph wants to "disguise from himself the
hateful fact that he felt it [the same way] too” (185).

A few years later, as he wonders what excuse Undine
will offer for missing their son Paul's second birthday
party, Ralph reflects: "For a long time now feminine

nearness had come to mean to him...the ever-renewed dread of

small daily deceptions, evasions, subterfuges.” The

62

discovery that Undine had reset her Marvell heirloom
jewelry, after telling him she would not, had marked "the
point beyond which there was no returning" from
disillusionment (213). Ralph now realizes,

it was admiration, not love, that she

wanted....and her conception of enjoyment was

publicity, promiscuity—-the band, the banners, the

crowd, the close contact of covetous impulses, and

the sense of walking among them in cool security.

(223-24)

This, Ralph's most accurate perception of Undine, does
not help him address their problems, because he remains
passive. He simply resigns himself to the idea that "They
were fellow-victims in the noyade of marriage" and concludes
that "if they ceased to struggle perhaps the drowning would
be easier for both..." (225, Wharton's ellipsis). His
growing unhappiness with Undine includes an escapist attempt
to return to his first love, who he had lost to the
"Invaders" long before he met Undine. As his marriage
disintegrates, Ralph begins to compare Clare and his wife.
He begins to see Clare more favorably; she is "light and
frivolous" like Undine, but Clare "would never have lied to
him or traded on his tenderness" (215). Yet Ralph views
Clare in much the same condescending way he had previously
viewed Undine. He is content in Clare's presence because
she makes him feel important. "With her eyes on him he felt
the exquisite relief of talking about himself as he had not
dared to talk to anyone since his marriage" (321). And
though speaking with her lets "light into the dusty

shuttered places" in Ralph's mind, he thinks, ”Clare's mind

63

was neither keen nor deep....But she had his own range of
allusions, and a great gift of momentary understanding..."
(323). For Ralph, even Clare isn't too bright; she is just
sympathetic. Ralph's view of Clare's intelligence is belied
by the fact that, when Undine sues for custody of Paul,
Clare is the first person to understand her motive. "‘Why
not give the money to Undine instead of to your lawyers?'"
she asks. Clare sees that "‘What [Undine] wants is the
money for her annulment'" and that she wants to "‘make you
buy [Paul] back from her'" (445-46).

Despite his disillusionment with Undine, Ralph cannot
stop struggling over the "drowning" of his marriage. During
Undine's prolonged stay in Europe--which ultimately ends in
their divorce--Ralph becomes obsessed with her letters and
tries to envision her through them. Sometimes ”he saw her,
closely, palpably before him, as she sat at the writing—
table, frowning and a little flushed,...her short lip pulled
up by the effort of composition..." (308). But this vision
of Undine focusing on him, as if she is away from Ralph
against her will, is destroyed by the letter in which she
says: ”‘Everybody's talking to me at once, and I don't know
what I'm writing'" (308). As Ralph realizes, ”Though his
feeling for her had changed, it still ruled his life." He
is aware now of her "weakness" but is still held by ”the
power of youth and radiance that clung to his disenchanted
memories..." (309). He begins to blame himself for their

failed marriage, not because he made no effort to understand

64

Undine, but because perhaps he had not "done all he could to
draw her half-formed spirit from its sleep" (309). To the
end, Ralph refuses to understand that Undine could not be
transformed into the woman he wanted her to be.

Yet despite all he has learned about Undine since their
marriage, so sure is Ralph that she had been innocent as his
bride, that he is thrown into complete shock by the
revelation of Undine's previous marriage to Elmer Moffatt.
This news follows the discovery that a business venture with
Moffatt won't yield the expected quick return, leaving Ralph
both without the money he needs to buy his son's custody and
unable to repay Clare's loan, the money she had been saving
in order to someday escape "Van Degenism."‘° Ralph cannot
accept the fact that not only had Undine been married

before, she had been married to "This man...thig man...,"

 

Moffatt, ”this coarse-grained man with whom," he had just
been thinking, "he hadn't a sentiment in common" (466, 464).
The impact of all this on Ralph causes him to feel that he
is "stumbling about in his inherited prejudices"--the ones
which had made him believe he could rescue Undine from the
Invaders--”like a modern man in mediaeval armour," so that

"the whole archaic structure of his rites and sanctions

 

1°The ongoing story of the business dealings surrounding
the Apex water works, which functions primarily as a
constant reminder of Elmer's power and influence,
exemplifies the way in which Wharton undermines the
narrative's illusion of accurate publicity. Information
about the water works is filtered through the perceptions of
partially-informed characters and is never made entirely
clear.

65

tumbled down about him" (469).

Even with his perception of society destroyed, however,
Ralph's view of his role toward Undine somehow fails to
change. He sees Undine herself quite differently; the
"overwhelming sense of her physical nearness which had once
so haunted and tortured him" now "filled the room with a
mocking glory" (471-72). Realizing that his life's project
had been a sham because it had already been too late to
influence Undine in the way he had envisioned, Ralph commits
suicide. But even in the act of suicide, Ralph perceives
himself as rescuing Undine. "He said to himself: ‘My
wife...this will make it all right for her...'" (474,
Wharton's ellipses). In his confusion, Ralph apparently
understands that his death will enable Undine to remarry and
so, unable to bear the strain of knowing she had been
married before him, he tells himself that he is really doing
this for her.11 In the midst of unbearable disillusionment,
Ralph cannot relinquish his vision of himself as his wife's
savior.

While still married to Ralph, Undine had begun her
attempt to negotiate a marriage to Peter Van Degen, who
could both support and display her lavishly. Undine had

long since rationalized her friendship with Van Degen: "it

 

11Auchincloss questions the credibility of Ralph
committing suicide because "his gr-wife had been secretly
married and divorced before she had married him" (104). But
Ralph never really perceives Undine as no longer his wife,
and the shock of learning about her previous marriage is the
culmination of a series of shocks to Ralph.

«a- w- "

 

66

ennobled her in her own eyes to influence such a man for
good,” since he "was noted for not caring for ‘nice women'"
(201-202). Undine does not admit to herself how much he may
be influencing hgr. As subsequent events show, in fact,
Peter does not view Undine any differently from the other
women she places herself above.

When they do become involved with each other, van Degen
refuses to enter a partnership with Undine, partly because
he does not trust her to uphold her side of it. After
Undine divorces Ralph, Peter won't see her. As her friend
Indiana Rolliver reveals, “‘He says that the very day you
went off with him last year you got a cable from New York
telling you to come back at once to Mr. Marvell, who was
desperately 111'" (358). Yet Wharton makes it clear that
Undine did not return to Ralph because she did not believe
he really was ill. Just as she later perceives Raymond as
acting when he confronts her about the Chelles tapestries,
Undine quickly assumes Laura's cable is an act, an attempt
to force her to return to New York and ”spoil her pleasure"
(297). "Ralph was always perfectly well--she could not
picture him as being suddenly at death's door and in need of
her....what if the cable were a device of the Marvell women
to bring her back?" (297) Herself aware of playing roles
throughout the novel, whether young girl in love, noble
mother, or incorruptible American woman, Undine readily
assumes that others do the same. Of course, it is also a

matter of convenience for Undine to rationalize away Laura's

 

67

cable in this way; she is about to begin her affair with Van
Degen when the cable arrives. When Undine rightfully points
out that Van Degen went with her anyway, Indiana explains,
"‘One day when he wasn't feeling very well he thought to
himself: "Would she act like that to mg if I was dying?"

And after that he never felt the same to you'" (360).

Undine clearly saw her affair with Van Degen as a
business move; "It had been a bold move, but it had been as
carefully calculated as the happiest Wall Street ‘stroke'"
(364). During their affair, Undine "had preserved her self-
respect by telling herself that she was really [Van Degen's]
wife, and in nogygy to higmg if the law delayed to ratify
the bond" (364, my emphasis). She takes credit for her
affair as a skillful maneuver but denies any moral
responsibility. Her "business” during their affair was to
“make each of their days so agreeable that when the last
came he should be conscious of a void to be bridged over as
rapidly as possible; and when she thought this point had
been reached she packed her trunks and started for Dakota,"
for the divorce court (366-67). Consequently, she has
trouble understanding why the ”move" didn't work. Undine
had failed to take into account that Peter might have
emotional needs, other than passion, in her attempt to form
a marriage partnership with him. Undine also fails to
realize the extent to which she is an outsider to the male
world. She is an outsider to the world of business by

choice, as I have discussed. But Undine discovers with van

 

 

 

 

 

 

68

Degen that even in hgr business, men play by different
rules. While their affair costs Undine her place in
society, Van Degen can have both a wife and a mistress, with
no apparent loss of social status.

van Degen perceives Undine's initial refusal to "‘be a
little fond'" of him as an act, not realizing how repulsive
she finds him (233-34). Undine had noted his "grotesque
saurian head, with eye-lids as thick as lips and lips as
thick as ear lobes" the first time she saw him (49). She
never does overcome her physical repugnance for Van Degen;
when he first kisses her, "she felt a moment's recoil"
(294). But as Undine learns more about the extent of
Peter's wealth, and has been married long enough to realize
the dearth of Ralph's, she decides she likes his type of
"‘exclusiveness,'" which is a "contempt for everything he
did not understand or could not buy" (192). He is "nice" to
listen to her financial problems (and give her two thousand
dollars), so Undine decides she wants to marry him, despite
being repulsed by him.

During their affair, Van Degen seems perfectly aware
that Undine wants the social and financial security of
marriage with him. While he never explicitly agrees to
marry her, he does nothing to correct her expectation that
he will. He "seemed in no way disturbed" by her references
to divorcing Ralph, and ”though Undine could not remember
his ever voluntarily bringing up the subject of their

marriage he did not shrink from her recurring mention of it"

69

(366). Thus Peter, by seeing clearly aspects of Undine's
character to which Ralph was initially blind, is able to
control his relationship with her and end the affair when it
no longer suits him.

Undine realizes too late that "her companion's view of
their relation was not the same as hers. She saw that he
had always meant it to be an unavowed tie, screened by Mrs.
Shallum's companionship and Clare's careless tolerance..."
(365). This is partially a rationalization for Peter's
never coming to Dakota; Undine doesn't want to believe that
anything she did had such a negative effect on him. But
Undine's perception is also supported by what we have
already seen of Van Degen. This is not his first extra-
marital affair, and he had said much earlier, in Undine's
presence, "‘Marry somebody who likes all the things you
don't, and make love to somebody who likes all the things
you do'" (174). This is precisely what he has done.‘2
While Peter retains his place in society after his affair
with Undine, she, now divorced, experiences the "lost
advantage" of no longer being Mrs. Ralph Marvell. "Her new

visiting-card, bearing her Christian name in place of her

 

12Nancy Morrow makes a similar point. Morrow,
however, does not believe there is anything more than van
Degen's use of the double standard involved in his failure
to marry Undine. Morrow says, "that Van Degen suddenly
reproaches Undine for leaving Ralph practically on his death
bed must be seen as simply the most graceful retreat he can
manage, and not as some kind of moral awakening, as his
story implies" (35). Van Degen clearly is rationalizing his
actions, but that does not mean he wouldn't be disturbed by
the way Undine treated Ralph.

 

 

7O

husband's, was like the coin of a debased currency
testifying to her diminished trading capacity" (361).

Because Van Degen entered into an affair with her,
Undine had thought he was in love with her. She believed
that the "cool spirit within her" which "seemed to watch
over and regulate her sensations" made her "capable of
measuring the intensity of those she provoked" (294).

Undine reflects,

It was wonderful how cool she felt--how easily she

could slip out of his grasp! Any man could be

managed like a child if he were really in love

with one... (294, Wharton's ellipsis).

What had been true of Ralph does not apply to Peter,
however, and Undine miscalculates her control over Van
Degen. Her failure to understand Van Degen's rules led
Undine to bargain away the prestige of the Dagonet-Marvell
line without receiving the superior display she expected in
return.

Feeling devalued, Undine becomes defensive. "She
feared to be associated with ‘the wrong people,‘ and scented
a shade of disrespect in every amicable advance. The more
pressing attentions of one or two men she had formerly known
filled her with a glow of outraged pride..." (361). When
Indiana chides her for leaving Van Degen in the middle of
their affair in order to get her divorce from Ralph, Undine
responds: "‘But what could I do? I'm not an immoral woman'"
(346). Undine can still view herself this way because:

The pleasures for which her sex took such risks

had never attracted her, and she did not even
crave the excitement of having it thought that

71

they did. She wanted, passionately and
persistently, two things which she believed should
subsist together in any well-ordered life:
amusement and respectability.... (353-54)

Being thought sexually immoral damages the respectibility
Undine wants, so she protects her self-image by believing
that, because she has no intrinsic interest in sexual
"pleasures," she is immune to criticism on that basis. As
Ammons points out, even women such as Undine "still live
through men" because "In Wharton's view the woman who wants
to make it to the very top of the American pyramid still has
only one route: confederate with a man already up there, or
one on the way" (Argument 112). Undine's period of social
ostracism confirms this in her mind, and she proceeds next
to align herself with Count Raymond de Chelles.

If Ralph fails his partnership with Undine because he
cannot provide enough money, Raymond fails because he
refuses both to fund Undine's extravagances and to display
her.‘° Undine had believed she was truly flattered by
Raymond's courtship; "Nor was there anything calculated in
her attitude" (401). But Undine's persistent "want of
money" is soon mentioned again, and it is not surprising
when she explores the possibility of buying her way into a
marriage with Chelles. She assumes both that he would end
her financial problems and that her "scarcely-gained

footing" in French society would be secured (402-05). When

 

13As Ammons says, "His lovely jealousy...is not a sign
of affection but of power" and "the ‘charming' Raymond is
simply a nightmarish exaggeration" of Ralph (Argument 115-
16).

72

Madame de Trezac suggests she become Chelles' mistress,
Undine self-righteously invokes the moral standards of Apex;
when her friend responds, "‘Personally, of course, I've
never quite got used to the French view--,'" Undine says,
"‘I hope no American woman ever does'" (404).

There is more to Undine's refusal to have an affair
with Raymond than moral scruples, however. She had already
been "cut" by society after her affair with Van Degen and
her divorce from Ralph, and Undine does not intend to make
the same mistake again. Thus, "her demeanour to Chelles was
that of the incorruptible but fearless American woman, who
cannot even conceive of love outside of marriage," and she
determines to "give up Chelles unless he was willing to
marry her" (404—05). She is learning to adjust her
strategies to the rules by which men play.

But once they are married, Raymond repeats Ralph's
efforts to control Undine's social life. He requires her to
"report of every hour she spent away from him" because he
considers her ”too young and good looking" to be "mixed up"
with Princess Estradina's "crew" (481-82). After a season
in Paris, "the lights went out"; he takes her to Saint
Desert, where Undine loses her hard-won publicity (489).

"At first she was sure she could laugh Raymond out of his

prudence" and convince him to spend more freely on her. But
Raymond, like Ralph, initially expects Undine to understand
the limitations on their finances: "he appealed to her good

sense....But his economic plea was as unintelligible to her

73

as the silly problems about pen-knives and apples in the
‘Mental Arithmetic' of her infancy..." (495-96). Then,
Undine notices,

He had apparently decided that his arguments were

unintelligible to her, and under all his ardour

she felt the difference made by the discovery. It

did not make him less kind, but it evidently made

her less important; and she had the half-

frightened sense that the day she ceased to please

him she would cease to exist for him. (496)

From this point on, the story of Undine's marriage to
Raymond is the story of a woman who is increasingly an
outsider to her husband's world. Raymond leaves Undine at
Saint Desert, where only her in-laws visit, while he takes
care of family affairs--usually getting his brother out of
debt---and engages in extramarital affairs. Whenever he
returns from a trip, Undine, very much aware of her
isolation from his life, "had a curious sense of his coming
back from unknown distances and not belonging to her or to
any state of things she understood," and she is "mortified
by the discovery that there were regions of his life she
could not enter" (497, 507). As Wershoven says, "This is a
terrible punishment for Undine, who can define herself only
through other people's eyes" (68). The only eyes watching
her at Saint Desert are those of her disapproving in-laws.

Wharton does not need to tell Raymond's story, simply
because it is the same old story and she has fully
anticipated it earlier in the novel. Just as Van Degen had

baldly stated his philosophy of marriage and affairs,

Raymond had told Charles Bowen that his relatives had been

7n

pressuring him to marry, and he had concluded, "‘One knows
that, like death, it has to come'“ (276). Raymond's
readiness to ignore Undine while indulging himself elsewhere
is therefore completely predictable. After their argument
about leasing the premier to Raymond's brother and his
bride, Raymond shuts Undine out even more. When his efforts
to discuss literature with her fail, they stop talking.

And, while the Chelles family judges Undine inadequate for
her failure to have a baby, the fact is that Raymond will
not sleep with her (506, 509-10).

Undine responds to this isolation in her usual way; by
focusing on her appearance at the eXpense of any
intellectual development: "her dresses were more than ever
her chief preoccupation" and "she scanned the fashion-papers
for new scents and powders, and experimented in facial
bandaging, electric massage and other processes of
renovation" (520-21). This process fails to regain her
husband's affection and does not, as Undine discovers,
secure her place in French society. Madame de Trezac tells
Undine that the members of Raymond's "set" "‘think you
beautiful....But a woman has got to be something more than
good—looking to have a chance to be intimate with them:
she's got to know what's being said about things'” (541).

Undine appears to take this criticism very seriously,
believing "she had never lacked insight into the cause of
her own failures," and having noticed herself that "Her

entrances were always triumphs; but they had no sequel"

 

 

 

 

 

 

75

(541). But she is unable to take seriously the idea that
beauty alone does not always suffice (although her failure
with Van Degen should have convinced her of this truth), and
soon abandoning her desultory attempts at learning, she
“prolonged her hours at the dress—maker's and gave up the
rest of the day to the scientific cultivation of her beauty"
(542). As a result, Undine remains an outsider not only to
the male world but to all of the French aristocracy. "As
soon as people began to talk they ceased to see her" will
continue to be the response to this beautiful but uninformed
woman (541-42).

Raymond's condescending treatment of Undine is similar
to Ralph's. When Undine complains that Raymond leased the
premier to his brother without consulting her, he replies,
"‘But, my dear child, you've always professed the most
complete indifference to business matters...'" (502). What
we know of Undine suggests this is probably true. Yet by
calling her a "child," Raymond indicates that like Ralph, he
does not consider his wife an adult whose opinions matter.
Undine shows some patience with Chelles, for "the discipline
of the last years had trained Undine to wait and dissemble."
But when Raymond announces that she must give up another
Spring in Paris because he is needed at Saint Desert, she
"wanted to burst into sobs like a child."1 She rebels,
telling Raymond, "‘You can do as you please; but I mean to
go to Paris'" (525).

Undine's subsequent attempt to fund her trip with the

76

Chelles tapestries completely disillusions Raymond. Like
Ralph, he is genuinely appalled at Undine's lack of concern
for his heritage and traditions.*‘ During their
confrontation about Undine's having the tapestries
appraised, Raymond "stood looking at her coldly and
curiously, as though she were some alien apparition his eyes
had never before beheld" (545). He lumps her into the class
of Invaders, declaring "‘you're all alike,'" and:

"You come among us speaking our language and not

knowing what we mean; wanting the things we want,

and not knowing why we want them; aping our

weaknesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or

ridiculing all we care about...and we're fools

enough to imagine that because you copy our ways

and pick up our slang you understand anything

about the things that make life decent and

honourable for us!" (545)
Raymond now fully understands Undine's superficiality.
Judith Fryer notes that, unlike Ralph, Raymond "asserts
himself in the face of her power" through speech. Raymond
"asserts his own ability to see clearly, and to speak
clearly, over her inability to see anything at all beyond
herself...“ (Felicitous Space 114).

Raymond's impassioned speech, however, is lost on

Undine, who perceives him as acting:

 

“Morrow discusses the parallels between Undine's
marriages to Raymond and to Ralph and says, "In both
marriages Undine tries to convert the symbols of order and
tradition into fashion and cold cash, by resetting the
Dagonet jewels and by trying to sell the de Chelles
tapestries" (36). Indeed, Undine's behavior highlights one
of the major differences between the old order and the
Invaders: the Invaders focus on collecting things, while old
society focuses on protecting (often unsuccessfully) what it
has.

77

He stopped again, his white face and drawn
nostrils giving him so much the look of an
extremely distinguished actor in a fine part that,
in spite of the vehemence of his emotions, his
silence might have been the deliberate pause for a

repligue.... (546)

Because Undine understands emotions only as an act, she can
discount Raymond's feelings. She protects herself from the
force of his anger by assuming he is playing a part.‘5 Thus
she can answer, "waiting long enough to give the effect of
having lost her cue," "‘Do you mean to say you're going to
refuse such an offer?" (546) But Raymond's protests are
valid, and Undine can respond only by leaving him and
returning, through marriage to Elmer Moffatt, to the world
from which Raymond now realizes she has come.

The story of Moffatt's social and financial rise is
woven throughout The Custom of the Coghtry. Undine's
feelings for him come closest to romantic love. After
meeting Elmer in New York, following years of separation,
Undine returns home crying and shaken (116-17). "She had
been drawn to him from the first" and, years later, Undine
is still attracted by Elmer's strength and power (548, 563).

She had allowed her father to arrange for their divorce

 

1'f'In contrast, the reference to Chelles as a "fine
actor" has been cited to suggest that his outbreak should
not be taken too seriously. See for example Wershoven, who
says Raymond's expression when he delivers his "long and
angry speech" contributes to "a sense of an innate
phoniness" which was already established when he "took the
part of ardent suiter” during their courtship and ”Undine
seemed to sense that he was acting" (69). But again, this
is Undine's perception; having acted but never felt ardently
herself, she does not think others actually have such
feelings either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

78

within a couple of weeks of their marriage because, as
Undine says, "‘I was so young...I didn't know anything...'"
(110, Wharton's ellipses). After learning that Elmer has
enough wealth to be "‘The greatest American collector'"
(530), Undine develops a desire to ”cry out her wrath and
wretchedness” to him. At first, "She did not think of
Moffatt as a power she could use, but simply as some one who
knew her and understood her grievance." Yet as Undine
observes the pieces of Elmer's collection scattered about
his room, "her heart beat at the signs of his altered state"
(566-67). Undine wants to be with Elmer both because she is
still attracted to him and because he now has the means to
support her in the way Raymond has not.

Unlike Ralph and Raymond, Elmer understands Undine
clearly and is able to use his understanding of her to
further his own success. When they met in New York early in
the novel, he blackmailed her with hints of revealing their
past marriage, because he knew how desperately Undine wanted
it kept secret. She had told him, "‘If any of [Ralph's]
folks found out, they'd never let him marry me....And it
would kill me, Elmer--it would just kill met'" (114) Undine

 

recognizes that she is an outsider to his world:

he gave her, more than any one she had ever known,
the sense of being detached from his life, in
control of it, and able...to choose which of its
calls he should obey. If the call were that of
business...she knew she would drop from his life
like a loosened leaf. (563)

This is no condemnation of Elmer, however. Undine perceives

that "He used life exactly as she would have used it in his

79

place" (563). Elmer's "place" is that of a man. While 1hr
gggr's Anna Leath faults herself for not living life as
fully as her step-son Owen, Undine sees in Elmer someone
whose dealings with the world are not limited by gender, as
hers are.“

Wharton uses this relationship as another gauge of
Undine's ignorance, which is related to her inability to
feel anything deeply. Undine simply does not care about the
same things as other people. Her ignorance is most fully
explored in the contrast between Moffatt's genuine love of
art and Undine's complete indifference to it, except as an
indication of wealth. The contrast is especially important
because they are so alike in other ways. When she takes
Moffatt around to look at various art objects, Undine finds
that "the things he looked at moved him in a way she could
not understand," whereas she "had lived in almost total
ignorance" of such objects and has now simply "acquired as
much of the jargon as a pretty woman needs to produce the
imprgggiph of being well-informed..." (563, 561; my
emphasis). The contrast between Elmer's and Undine's

reactions to art confirms Ralph's earlier perception of

 

1"'Allen Stein notes how Undine is affected by her lack
of power:

Barred because of her sex from the sources of

power available to men and incapable of

understanding the underlying causes of her

resultant sense of frustration...she is

chronically restive, dissatisfied, grasping--

seeking feverishly in possession, social position,

and men the power for which, largely unbeknown to

herself, she really longs. (244-45)

 

 

 

80

Undine as "a creature of skin-deep reactions" who "remained
insensible to the touch of the heart" (224).

As she reminisces with Elmer about their first romance,
Undine tells him that her life so far has "‘all been an
awful mistake. But I shouldn't care if you were here and I
could see you sometimes. You're so strong....'" And, we
are told, "She had never spoken more sincerely. For the
moment all thought of self-interest was in abeyance, and she
felt again...the instinctive yearning of her nature to be
one with his" (568). She tells Elmer that their
relationship "‘was the only time I ever really cared--all
throught'" Undine cries out, "‘Oh, E1mer--if I'd known-~if
I'd only knownt'" What she really means is that if she had
known how well Elmer would do, she could have stayed with
him in the first place and foregone her other marriages.
This is symbolically confirmed by the way she "turned away,
touching with an unconscious hand the edge of the lapis bowl
among his papers" (570).

Knowing that her husband is having an affair, Undine
sees a way to gain the same kind of amusement without losing
her respectibility as a French Marquise. She proposes to
Elmer that she become his mistress. The plan appeals to
Undine because it would not entail the vulnerability she had
faced as divorced mistress to Van Degen; "she had no wish to
affront again the social reprobation that had so nearly
wrecked her" (564). Elmer Moffatt, however, does not want a

mistress; he wants a wife. He tells Undine, ”‘if you want

81

to come back you've got to come that way...walk in by the
front door, with your head up....'" That Undine expects him
to give in to her is clear in her belief that "the great
moment of her life had come at last--the moment all her
minor failures and successes had been building up with blind
indefatigable hands“ (572). But Moffatt stands firm, and
her "great moment" ends in finally accepting Elmer's
ultimatum to divorce Raymond and remarry him.

Just before her marriage to Raymond, Undine had asked
Elmer if he intended to marry. He had answered, "‘Why, I
shouldn't wonder--one of these days. Millionaires always
collect something; but I've got to collect my millions
first'" (419). Once he does, Moffatt is ready to "collect"
Undine and give her, along with the Chelles tapestries, the
display for which she has longed.*’ Blake Nevius says
Undine "is bound to fall short of her goals because her
ideals are incompatible" (152). But the contrast between
Undine's situation and the behavior of both Peter Van Degen
and Raymond de Chelles shows that, in her world,
respectability and amusement are incompatible only for
women.

Ultimately the most sympathetic character in this novel
is one of the least developed: Undine's son, Paul. As 2hr

Custom of the Country nears its end, Wharton strips away the

 

17The aristocracy, as well as the ”Invaders,” is
implicated in the sale of the tapestries; Raymond sold them
in order to pay off his brother Hubert's gambling debts
(592).

 

82

narrative's sympathy for Undine by showing her through
Paul's point of view.‘° Just as Ralph had learned of
Undine's movements through lawyers' cables and newspaper
articles, Paul seeks "clues" to his mother's marital
"transitions" in Mrs. Heeny's bag of clippings. This eight-
year-old child does not remember Ralph, so he thinks of
Raymond as his father (582). He is sickened to learn how
his mother got her divorce from Raymond:

She said things that weren't true...That was what

he had always feared to find out...She had got up

and said before a lot of people things that were

awfully false about his dear French father...

(586, Wharton's ellipses).
The publicity surrounding Undine's adventures has also made
"a lot of people" privy to information that those who should
be closest to her must learn of in the same forum. Even the
fact of Undine's and Elmer's first marriage, so carefully
guarded by Undine until this point, is reported in the
outrageous gossip—page article that records the "‘Quick work
untying'" Undine from de Chelles and "‘tying'" her to
Moffatt, "‘the billionaire Railroad King, who was the

Marquise's first husband'" (584—85).19

 

1aBeth Kowaleski-Wallace has discussed how Wharton's
use of Paul's perspective manipulates the reader to feel
outraged for Paul, thereby keeping us distanced from Undine.
Wallace also convincingly argues that we are harsher toward
Undine as a failed parent than we would be toward a man
("The Reader as Misogynist").

19As Robert Caserio comments, "Wharton's story is about
a marriage that is uncannily, simultaneously, also a
divorce....For Undine marries Elmer again as husband number
four, in a way that makes us feel she's been both married to
and divorced from him without a break" ("Edith Wharton and
the Fiction of Public Commentary" 197).

83

Wharton encourages the reader to empathize with Paul
with several pages describing his wanderings through
Undine's new house, where he has arrived on a school
holiday, and by contrasting these ostentatious surroundings
with Paul's loneliness. Brief references to ”pictures he
would have liked to know about" and his love of books
suggest Paul's affinity to the father he has forgotten.
Paul especially likes vandyck's Grey Boy because the boy
looks "so sad and lonely that he too might have come home
that very day to a strange house in which none of his old
things could be found" (578).

Paul's perspective is credible because Undine had
previously shown so little interest in him. Before she
wanted to marry Raymond, Undine had "consoled" herself "by
thinking of [Paul] as ‘better off' with Ralph's family, and
of herself as rather touchingly disinterested in putting his
welfare before her own." But Undine actually wanted to keep
herself free of "the additional burden" of caring for Paul
(370). The extent of her feelings for Paul is revealed in
the following lines: "She could forget him when...things
were ‘going her way,‘ but in moments of discouragement the
thought of him was an added bitterness, subtly different
from her other bitter thoughts, and harder to quiet" (370).
Wharton allows Undine some maternal feelings, only to use
them to emphasize her shallowness. Having been raised to
put herself first, Undine cannot understand her vague

feelings for her son. When her mother had previously told

84

Undine that Paul did not recognize a photograph of her,
Undine merely reflected, "It was dreadful that her little
boy should be growing up far away from her, perhaps dressed
in clothes she wogld have hated" (406, my emphasis).

Undine's feelings for Paul had suddenly become
important only when Moffatt suggested that she press her
claim for custody, in order to get the money from the
Marvells that she needed to buy her way into marriage with
de Chelles. Undine says to Moffatt, "‘I can't tell you how
I miss him,'" with "a ring of truth that carried conviction
to her own ears if not to Moffatt's," and "she did not
understand how she could have lived so long without him..."
(417-18, Wharton's ellipsis). Only now does Undine find the
separation from her son unbearable. Once she has Paul,
Undine soon lapses back into indifference toward him. She
is "pleasantly absorbed" in him for a while but soon finds
it "more and more difficult to fit his small exacting
personality into her cramped rooms and crowded life” (485,
491). Reunited with Paul again after her honeymoon with
Moffatt, Undine criticizes his haircut, protests the
intensity of his hug, and cuts off his efforts to talk to
her, because she has a party to give (587-88).

By ending the novel with a party, Wharton underscores
again both Undine's insatiable need for display and her
chronic dissatisfaction with life. Discussing changes in
New York social life in the early twentieth century, Kaplan

says, "The upper-class home functioned less as a private

85

haven from the competition of the marketplace than as the
public stage for that competition" (93). This is certainly
true of the Moffatts' two mansions; the New York one is "an
exact c0py of the Pitti Palace," and the Parisian one
features a ballroom with the Chelles tapestries "set in
great gilt panels" (586-87). But as Judith Saunders argues,
Undine ultimately fails in that there is always something
she cannot have.’° When Undine learns that Moffatt cannot
be an ambassador because she is divorced, she "burst into an
angry laugh" and is insulted, "as if the rule had been
invented to humiliate her" (594). The novel ends without a
sense of closure for Undine. Instead, she greets her guests
while saying bitterly to herself that the unreachable part
of an ambassador's wife "was the one part she was really

made for" (594).

 

2°Saunders has discussed how, in Wharton's fiction,
characters tend to repeat struggles that do not succeed.
Thus, as Saunders notes, Undine's story appears to be one of
upward movement, but there is actually a theme of failure,
because she is never satisfied ("Repetitive Action”).

h

 

Chapter Three

Ironic Structure and Untold Stories

in The Age of Innocence

In her 1920 The A e of Innocence, Wharton presents a
story which, on the surface, is a man's story, and which in
many ways appears to be a conventional nineteenth—century
romance. These things appear to be so because Wharton tells
the story from Newland Archer's point of view, focusing on
his consciousness and the way he deals with the potential
love triangle in which he finds himself. But as Rachel Blau
DuPlessis argues, while nineteenth—century authors made
certain "that Bildung and romance could not coexist and be
integrated for the heroine at the resolution," twentieth-
century women writers are "writing beyond" such endings,
breaking the narrative structure which says that women must
ultimately sacrifice their questing to marriage, or die (3-
4). In The A e of Innocence, Wharton writes beyond a
traditional nineteenth-century ending by ironically
undermining the structure of the novel and its focus on
Newland Archer, a would—be American hero, and by drawing the
reader's attention to the untold stories of Ellen Olenska
and May Welland.

Wharton's careful structuring of The Age of Innocence

is evidenced by the three different plans she outlined for

86

87

the novel.‘ In the first version, May and Archer break
their engagement. Archer is shocked when Ellen responds to
his proposal by suggesting that they spend a few weeks
together to make sure of their feelings for each other.
Ellen and Newland marry despite Archer's misgivings but
eventually separate because Ellen's soul "‘recoils'" from
the prospect of an old New York marriage. Ellen returns to
Europe, where "‘She is very poor, & very lonely, but she has
a real life'"; Archer returns to his mother's house.
Apparently this version of the novel would have emphasized
Ellen's ability to act and to cause extensive changes in the
lives of others.

Wharton's second plan calls for a much more
conventional novel: Archer marries May and has a brief
affair with Ellen, who then returns to Europe. Discussing
these plans, Alan Price concludes that Wharton shifted the
focus from Ellen to Archer in the second version partly
because:

she could not be confident [in her first plan]

that her readers would share her sympathy for a

woman who broke up the engagement of a nice girl,

suggested a trial marriage, and then abandoned her

husband because she thought New York's seasonal

social life was dull (24).

The third plan again has Archer marrying May but having an

affair with Ellen. Although everyone else surmises that

Newland and Ellen are lovers, May ”‘suspects nothing.'” As

 

‘Price 24-27. See Price for Wharton's three plans for
The Age of Innocence and for further discussion of those
plans.

88

a Catholic, Ellen cannot divorce, so she could not marry
Newland even if he left May. But Ellen again grows tired of
New York and her affair with Archer and returns to "‘the
freedom and variety of her European existence.'" The final
dinner for Ellen in versions two and three is simply a good-
bye, not the ritual of ostracism it becomes in the finished
novel.

By the time she had completed The Age of Innocence in
its published form, Wharton had made Ellen Olenska an
ostensibly minor character, while Newland Archer became the
novel's central figure. As Wharton's chosen center of
consciousness, Newland appears to be a traditional American
hero: the American male whose search for a new frontier,
according to such critics as Henry Nash Smith and Richard
Chase, makes this country's literature distinctly American
(Baym 131—32). Discussing the way the myth of the American
hero has displaced women writers from the canon and has
trivialized women characters in fiction, Nina Baym says that
the myth entails "the pure American self" confronting "the
promise offered by the idea of America...that in this new
land, untrammeled by history and social accident, a person
will be able to achieve complete self-definition...."
Society becomes "something artificial and secondary to human
nature" which "exerts an unmitigatedly destructive pressure
on individuality." Because both society and landscape are
"depicted in unmistakably feminine terms," the American hero

is realized as the opposite of the feminine, and the myth

89

becomes exclusively male (Baym 131-33).

The American hero's story becomes, in effect, a male
bildun sroman; thus Archer, whose first name refers to the
American hero's quest for a new land, struggles with his
romance triangle and his need for self-definition. Newland
persistently fails to define himself, however. Married to
May for a year, he contrasts his present life with his
"vision of the past" and muses, "‘What am I? A son-in-
law--'” (215). At the end of the novel, Newland reminisces
about having "risen up at the call" to politics (dropping
"thankfully" into obscurity when not re-elected), and of
having been "‘A good citizen'" and "what was called a
faithful husband” (346-47). To the end, Wharton emphasizes
that Newland is defined by his social roles.

May is originally the frontier on which Newland plans
to exercise his self-hood. She is to be a "miracle of fire
and ice,” both passion and purity, which he will create by
his "enlightening companionship" (7). But Newland
relinquishes this goal after his wedding, concluding that
”There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not
the dimmest notion that she was not free,” an assumption
based largely on the "most tranquil unawareness" Newland
believes he sees in May's eyes (195-98, 188).

Ellen is the promising landscape; for Newland, this
quite unfree woman comes to represent the freedom of a world
different from his own. Sitting beside Ellen in his wife's

carriage, Newland tells her, "‘The only reality to me is

90

this.'" When Ellen asks if he wants her to be his mistress,
the flustered Newland replies:

"I want somehow to get away with you into a world

where words like that--categories like that--won't

exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings

who love each other, who are the whole of life to

each other; and nothing else on earth will

matter." (288-90)
This is the new—land of Archer's name. What he really wants
is the ability to move between May's and Ellen's worlds
without any cost to himself, and without deciding between
the two worlds. That Newland seeks a dream world rather
than an actual place is suggested by the fact that he had
previously rejected the possibility of a physical quest.
When Ned Winsett had spoken of emigrating, Newland had
thought, "Emigrate! As if a gentleman could abandon his own
country!" (126) Ironically, one of the few physical
journeys Newland does make is his flight from Ellen to
Florida, where he begs May to hasten their wedding--with the
result that Ellen can be, at most, his mistress.2 Ellen
sees through his romanticized longing for another world and
responds, "‘Oh my dear--where is that country?'” (290)

Wharton undermines her own form throughout the novel,

writing beyond the story about Newland Archer to convey a

sense of the women characters that her attention to her

 

2Cynthia Griffin Wolff reads the novel this way, noting
that unlike most bildun sromans, Newland's is an "entirely
internal" search: "He cannot flee the provincial world of
old New York; he must learn to transmute it into something
valuable." What his search leads to, Wolff argues, is
Newland's "dedication to generativity," the same commitment
to the future that May and the other mothers in the novel
share (314-15).

91

audience and to acceptable forms removed from center stage.
Beside Newland's bildungsroman is that of Ellen Olenska,
whose search it manifested by a physical journey--"home" to
New York, then back again to Europe.“ Wharton makes it
clear that Ellen's return to New York is a type of guest.
At the van der Luydens' dinner, Newland assures Ellen that
she is "‘among friends.'" She answers, "‘Yes--I know.
That's why I came home. I want to forget everything else,
to become a complete American again...'" (65, my emphasis).
Not that Ellen's journey to New York involves a
wholesale acceptance of its ways. She refuses to live with
her grandmother because she "‘had to be free,'" and she
moves away from the social center of New York to be
surrounded by artists, as she was in France (77, 68). When
Archer tells her that her house is in an unfashionable
quarter, she says, "‘Why not make one's own fashions?
But,'" she concedes, "‘I suppose I've lived too
independently; at any rate, I want to do what you all do-—I
want to feel cared for and safe'” (74-75). She continues,
"‘Being here is like--like--being taken on a holiday when
one has been a good little girl and done all one's lessons'"

(75). She appeals to Newland for help with learning how to

 

aWendy Gimbel also discusses Ellen's bildungsroman.
But Gimbel considers this primarily an "interior quest”
manifested by Ellen's movement among houses (127-30). She
also argues that in returning to New York, Ellen initially
seeks oblivion and regression (144). Similarly, Carol
Wershoven discusses R.W.B. Lewis' criteria for an American
hero and says, "Wharton's novels with their intruder
heroines are a variation of the American theme," with the
heroines working "toward their own autonomy" (17).

 

 

92

fit in: "‘But you'll explain these things to me--you'll tell
me all I ought to know'" (76). Newland responds, "‘It's you
who are telling me: opening my eyes to things I'd looked at
so long that I'd ceased to see them.'" He has turned
Ellen's appeal for help around, thus re-focusing her
energies, and the reader's, on him quest (76). Newland is
unable to truly help Ellen because he is so self-absorbed.
Ellen's respect for the ways of old New York becomes
increasingly tinged with skepticism.‘ She soon begins to
see New York differently: it is no longer a haven. Ellen's
early ability to see through the van der Luydens'
reclusiveness (76) anticipates her increasing ability to
make her own informed judgments about New York and to decide
whether or not her quest should end there. Newland, trying
to steer Ellen away from the influence of Julius Beaufort,
assures her that the older women "‘want to help you.'”
Ellen answers, ”‘on condition that they don't hear anything
unpleasant...Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr.
Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind
people who only ask one to pretendt'" (78) Ellen has
already discovered that she must continue to be a ”good
little girl" if she is to get along in New York; her success

there depends on behaving to please others, as children must

 

“Carol Wershoven discusses the way that, in Wharton's
novels, a woman who becomes an outsider often "begins to
form her own, new values, and to act and to grow
independently" (16). Fryer also discusses Ellen's place as
a "marginal" character who "threatens to engulf the little
world of order and purity in a world of sexual and cultural
richness that would destroy it” (”Purity and Power" 164).

 

93

do, and stifling her adult views and feelings. If she fails
to do so Ellen may, like a had little girl, lose her
allowance.

In a later scene, Newland (not yet married) confesses
his love for Ellen and speaks of their freeing themselves
for each other (170). But Ellen rejects Newland's plan
because of the sense of loyalty he had made her feel: "‘you
hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and
indifference. That was what I'd never known before and it's
better than anything I've known'" (172). Ellen's words
suggest that Wharton wants the reader to view Newland
positively, as a champion of loyalty, kindness, and concern.
But while Ellen sees his advice that she give up her divorce

suit as evidence of Newland's strong moral character,

Newland was simply representing the family's view when he
gave her that advice (96-98). By speaking for the family
and urging Ellen not to divorce, Newland has, in effect,
sabotaged his own quest. Finding that they are now
inconvenient to him, he is willing to overthrow the
principles for which he had stood. Ellen, however, refuses
to do so.

In this scene, Ellen also tells of Granny's revealing
how New York sees her.

"I was perfectly unconscious at first that people

here were shy of me--that they thought I was a

dreadful sort of person....New York simply meant

peace and freedom to me: it was coming home"

(172).

She tries to explain to Archer the way this realization has

94

affected her: "‘I mgr lonely; I g§§_afraid. But the
emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into
myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where
there's always a light'" (173). This is a critical stage in
Ellen's quest. She has learned to find comfort and strength
within herself, rather than seeking them in the external
world.3 She is now able to leave New York (returning only
when her grandmother has a stroke), so that she does not
disrupt Newland's and May's wedding. But Archer responds,
"‘I don't understand you!‘” He still assumes that a woman
needs a man to sustain her; earlier in their confrontation,
when she cried "‘I can't love you unless I give you up,'" he
had retorted, "‘And Beaufort? Is he to replace me?'" (173)
Newland, unable to comprehend Ellen's psychological self-
reliance, continues to think that she is simply rejecting
him in favor of another man.

Because she is seen through Newland's eyes and appears
primarily as a factor in his quest, much of Ellen's story is
untold. Yet Wharton constantly rgmihgg_us that this is the
case. She ironically invites the reader to speculate about
Ellen's story by focusing on Newland's obsessive curiosity
about it--a curiosity that is fed by Ellen's own willingness
to leave her story untold. In this way, Newland's quest
becomes largely a search for information about Eiighig. In

Ellen's legal file, Newland finds a letter from her husband

 

aGimbel, in contrast, interprets this scene as evidence
that Ellen is still acting and thinking as a child (147).

i
i

 

95

which he tells himself contains "the vague charge of an
angry blackguard"--that Ellen had had an affair with his
secretary. Yet Newland wonders, ”how much truth was behind
it? Only Count Olenski's wife could tell" (110). Many of
Newland's subsequent conversations with Ellen involve
attempts to answer this question. Initially, he gropes for
a denial, but Ellen does not give one. When he asks what
she thinks she can gain by divorcing her distant husband,
Ellen says, "‘But my freedom--is that nothing?'" Newland
concludes that "the charge in the letter was true, and that
she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt" (111-12). For
Newland, apparently, Ellen's freedom gggg mean nothing; he
assumes that she would only want to be free from one man in
order to marry (i.e., relinquish her freedom to) another.

Unsettled by Ellen's failure to deny having had an
affair, Newland "rambles on” in "his intense desire to cover
over the ugly reality which her silence seemed to have laid
bare" (112). Newland needs to know whether or not Ellen has
had an affair because for him it is important to keep women
in categories: he remembers how young men make an ”abysmal
distinction between the women one loved and respected and
those one enjoyed--and pitied” (97). He tries to tell
himself that in Europe, there might arise situations ”in
which a woman naturally sensitive and aloof would yet, from
the force of circumstances...be drawn into a tie inexcusable
by conventional standards" (97). Newland is clearly

uncomfortable with such a scenario, however; only when Ellen

96

implicitly denies her husband's accusation, saying "‘I had
nothing to fear from that letter,'" is Newland ready to
commit himself to her (170).

Contrasted with Ellen's bildungsroman is May's
seemingly conventional romance. But Wharton undermines
May's romance plot, as well. One of the more obvious ways
in which Wharton wrote beyond a traditional nineteenth-
century novel ending was her handling of Newland's and May's
wedding. Rather than concluding the novel with Archer's
feelings for Ellen resolved beforehand, as it would have a
conventional novel, the wedding begins Book II of The Age of
Innocence. structurally, placing the wedding here suggests
a new beginning, but in fact Newland's conflict continues--
and intensifies--once he is married.

The wedding itself is an extremely ironic occasion. It
takes place the Tuesday after Easter, a holiday that
symbolizes regeneration, new life, hope; yet, as Virginia
Blum notes, the service is "cast in funereal language" (25).
Newland compares his wedding with an Opera night and wonders
if,

when the Last Trump sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry

would be there with the same towering ostrich

feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort with the

same diamond earrings and the same smile--and

whether suitable proscenium seats were already

prepared for them in another world. (181)

With this imagery, Wharton juxtaposes the two traditional
nineteenth-century novel endings: marriage and death become

one. Newland cannot concentrate on the ceremony; he looks

for Ellen, and misses half of the bridal procession (183-

97

84).

Placing the wedding in the center of the novel suggests
that The Age of Innocence will fit another pattern that
developed early in the twentieth century: novels ”which
either begin with [the heroine's] marriage or launch her
rapidly into it, and concern a working out of her identity
within or against the context of the marriage" (McNall 76-
77). Wharton does not work out May's identity, however;
May's story, like Ellen's, remains untold. The difference
is that, while Newland becomes obsessed with Ellen's story,
he has almost no curiosity about his wife's. He prefers the
potentially scandalous past of another woman even to the
present of his own wife who, he assumes, has no past worth
his notice.

Newland discounts May's experience because he perceives
her as completely innocent.s In fact, we see May only
through his eyes; Newland projects his ideal of innocence
onto May (just as he projects an aura of secrecy onto
Ellen). May appears to be the innocent of the novel's
title, but she is not, and Newland must misinterpret his
interactions with May in order to continue viewing her as
innocent. When May questions his reason for wanting to

hasten their wedding, Newland recognizes her insight. But

 

‘Elizabeth Ammons discusses the "American girl”
idealized in late nineteenth-century novels--”adventurous,
ignorant, virtuous, self-assured"--and says that "Wharton
was attacking an entire tradition when she entered May
Welland in the lists of nineteenth-century American girls,"
because this ideal of innocence is so negative and
destructive ("Cool Diana” 213-15).

 

98

when she "flushed with joy" at his assurance that "‘There is
no pledge--no obligation whatever--of the kind you think,'"
May "seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to
helpless and timorous girlhood..." (148-50). Ironically, he
is disappointed with May for believing that he is telling
the truth.

This scene also indicates May's "potential for growth
and change" (Wershoven 87). This potential is what Archer
does not see. One of the few times in the novel that he
really looks at his wife is near the end, when he "was
struck by something languid and inelastic in her attitude"
and briefly "wondered if the deadly monotony of their lives
had laid its weight on her also" (293). He does not
consider that she may suspect his feelings for Ellen, much
less that she may be pregnant. Newland then trivializes
what he sees by attributing May's languid demeanor to the
fact that he had forgotten to meet her at her grandmother's
that day (293).

Only in the novel's penultimate chapter, at the dinner
for Ellen, does Archer realize how much his wife has
suspected and how often she has acted.

And then it came over him, in a vast flash made up

of many broken gleams, that to all of them he and

Madame Olenska were lovers....he understood that,

by means as yet unknown to him, the separation

between himself and the partner of his guilt had

been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had

rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption

that nobody knew anything.... (335)

The "means" had culminated in May's telling Ellen she was

pregnant, before she knew for certain; and in telling this

99

lie, May was "acting with the knowledge and approval of the
family" (Felicitous Space 138). Fryer says that ”Because of
the way we are used to readin novels, the romance of
Newland and Ellen at first obscures the force of the
countersubject: the inexorableness of the offensive launched
by the women" against Ellen (Ergr 138, my emphasis).

Wharton gives us what appears to be a traditional novel and
then surprises us with this most powerful glimpse of May's
untold story. In fact, it has been Newland's lack of
attention to May's story that has enabled her to destroy his
hope of "escape": while he fell asleep exhausted after
arranging for Ellen to come to him once, May was having the
"really good talk" with Ellen that causes her finally to
decide to return to Europe (314-15).

May's careful, knowing control of her situation--
contrasted with Newland's ignorance--makes the title of 1hr
Age of Innocence especially ironic. Wharton appears to have
intended this effect. Her working title for this novel was
Old New York. In both of the plans in which Newland and May
marry, Newland has an affair with Ellen which his wife never
suspects (Price 24-27). Only in the final version, when she
changed the title to 2hg_hge of Innogghgg, did Wharton
invert the relationship between suspicion and truth,
changing May into a woman who assumes that her husband has
had an affair when he has not.

Also ironic is the way Wharton treats May as

domesticator. This role, like that of May's innocence, is

100

largely projected onto her by Newland. Early in the novel,
Newland had ”thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker, and
about to ally himself with one of his own kind" (32). But
as he becomes enamored with Ellen, "there were moments when
he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”
His response is to rush to May, to encourage her, in effect,
to seal his future before he risks involvement with Ellen
(140). Much later, at the dinner which is "the tribal rally
around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe,”
Newland "felt like a prisoner in the center of an armed
camp" (334-35). These and other references to Newland's
feeling trapped are juxtaposed with the fact that hr begged
that his wedding be hastened, and that May offered to break
their engagement when she sensed that he loved another
woman.

As Wharton takes care to describe it, May's house
represents all the negative aspects of domesticity; here
Newland also feels trapped, as the following scene
indicates. One winter evening in his library, watching May
as she sews, Newland opens the window because "‘The room is
stifling; I want a little air.'" Leaning out the window,

The mere fact of not looking at May, seated beside

his table, under his lamp, the fact of seeing

other houses, roofs, chimneys, of getting the

sense of other lives outside his own, other cities

beyond New York, and a whole world beyond his

world, cleared his brain and made it easier to

breathe. (295)

May is infringing on Newland's space; this is hit table, hig

lamp, his library-—the only room in the house he has

101

decorated as he likes. He looks out the window to "a whole
world beyond," much as the traditional American hero looks
to the landscape and the frontier for escape from a
domesticated world.

But Wharton undermines Newland's perception in two
ways. In this scene, Newland is frustrated because Ellen
has just refused to become his mistress. And Newland's
sense of May as entrapper is ironic because he has
considerably misunderstood her character. Before opening
the window,

...he said to himself with a secret dismay that he

would always know the thoughts behind [her clear

brow], that never, in all the years to come, would
she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new

idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion....
(295)

Yet Wharton makes it clear that Archer does hpt know May's
thoughts; he not only hasn't realized that she suspects his
feelings for Ellen, he does not yet know that May and the
rest of the family have determined to exclude him from their
discussions of Ellen (296). When May says, "‘Do shut the
window. You'll catch your death,'" he wants to tell her,
"‘I gm_dead--I've been dead for months and months.'" But
any sympathy we may feel for him wanes when he thinks, "What
if it were ghg who was dead!....[May] might die, and set him
free" (295-96). Having failed to take control of his own
life, Newland now passively hopes for a catastrophe to
change his life for him.

If May represents domesticity and her house, that

domesticating force, Ellen's house represents escape for

102

Newland. Ellen's drawing room is "unlike any room he had
ever known"; it contains pictures that "bewildered him, for
they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at
(and therefore able to see) when he travelled in Italy" (70-
71). In the same way, Newland is "unable to see" Ellen
herself; she will remain, for him, wrapped in an aura of
European mystique. Newland had contrasted Ellen's drawing
room, with its "vague pervading perfume...like the scent of
some far-off bazaar," with the stuffy, conventional house
that awaited him after his conventional honeymoon with May
(71-72). As Fryer notes, Ellen "offers the possibilities of
individual freedom and experience, instinct and variety,
cultural and sexual richness...[so] Newland sends her not
lilies-of-the-valley, but yellow roses" ("Purity and Power"
161).

Unlike the typical nineteenth-century woman's
bil un sroman, Ellen's story ends in neither death nor
marriage. Her quest has not been sacrificed to romance, as
far as we know; she rejects the novel's two major romance
possibilities: an affair with Newland and return to her
husband.7 At the end of the novel, twenty-six years after
Ellen is banished from New York, Newland has an opportunity
to see her again. May has died, and Newland, in Paris with
his son Dallas, has received an invitation to Ellen's. But

upon reaching her apartment building, Newland decides not to

 

7DuPlessis discusses the way that, in traditional
nineteenth-century novels, ”any plot of self-realization was
at the service of the marriage plot" (6).

 

 

 

103

go in. Critics have offered several convincing reasons for
this ending: Newland may be afraid to take the risk of a
real relationship, or that Ellen will have changed too much;
or, he may be so struck with Dallas' revelation that May had
understood what it meant for him to give up Ellen, that he
does not want to disturb his memory of May, who had "guessed
and pitied" (356).°

However we choose to interpret Newland's declining to
see Ellen at the end, the fact is that with this ending,
Wharton leaves the resolution of Ellen's bildungsroman open,
and once again invites us to speculate about her untold
story. Like Newland, we can only imagine whether or not
quest and romance coexist for Ellen, just as we can only
imagine what it was like for May to live at the center of "a
kind of innocent family hypocrisy" in which her husband and
children treated her as one ”so lacking in imagination, so
incapable of growth” that she saw nothing that happened
around her (348). Wharton does invite us to imagine the
best for Ellen, however, by suggesting that she has kept
herself free all these years.

So the novel ends with the bittersweet denouement of
Newland Archer's quest in which, because his son touches on
what he and May had never spoken of, "He had to deal all at
once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an

inarticulate lifetime," a life which "had been too starved"

 

'See Fryer ("Purity and Power") 156; Gimbel 162; and
Ammons ("Cool Diana") 210-11 for these three major
interpretations of the ending.

 

 

 

104

(356-57). And in the same city where his quest comes to an
end is Ellen, who so far as we can tell, enjoys the
"‘freedom and variety of her European existence'" on the
same street in Paris where the divorced Wharton lived for

many years, surrounding herself with "a quiet harvest of

friendship" (357).

Chapter Four
Repaying Her Daughter:

The Mother's Recompense

In The Mother's Recompense (1925), Wharton again

presents as the novel's center of consciousness a character
who persistently misinterprets and oversimplifies other
characters, and who misunderstands her own motives and
actions. The difference is that now the center of
consciousness is a woman. Wharton explores Kate Clephane's
perspective with the same mixture of subtle irony,‘ partial
sympathy, and psychological realism which marks her
treatment of Ralph Marvell in The Cgstgm of the Cogptry_and
Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence. The result is
Wharton's most poignant (if not most sympathetic) woman
character. Kate's egocentric nature and her obsession with
the one sexually fulfilling relationship of her life combine
to blind her to the stories of the other major characters in
the novel--her daughter Anne and her one-time lover, Chris
Fenno--and prevent her from accepting Fred Landers' love.

But, as in The Aqe of Innocence, Wharton's narrative directs

 

‘There is, of course, nothing subtle about the irony of
Chris' meeting and falling in love with Kate's daughter.
What is subtle is Wharton's treatment of Kate's psychology
throughout the novel, as she becomes first "the mother" and
ultimately her lover's mother-in-law.

105

106

the reader's attention to elements of the other characters'
ostensible untold stories, ironically undermining the
assumptions upon which Kate acts. The narrative makes it
clear that, contrary to Kate's View, Anne is not "perfect"
despite her mother's having abandoned her. Nor can Kate
force Chris out of Anne's life by treating him as though he
were the same careless young man she had once known.

In The A e of Innocence, Wharton changed the center of
consciousness from Ellen Olenska to Newland Archer.
Similarly, The Mother's Recompense is a revision of an
earlier manuscript that focused on the daughter's story,
after her mother has abandoned her and her father and
married another man. Cynthia Griffin Wolff discusses the
1902 manuscript, "Disintegration," and concludes that
Wharton lost interest in the theme of childhood "desolation"
which she had already addressed in her 1902 The Valley of
Decision. Instead, Wolff says, the "plight of the mother”
intrudes so forcefully into the narrative that Wharton
ultimately made it the focus of the novel (A Feast of gprgg,
100). Wharton's outlines of The Age of Innocence document
her conscious decision to remove Ellen Olenska from the
center of that novel, a decision that allowed Wharton to
focus ostensibly on the more socially acceptable character
of Newland Archer. Conversely, when Wharton returned to
"Disintegration" in 1925, she was ready to tell "the other
side" of her story, that of Kate Clephane. In the finished

1925 novel, The Mother's Recom ense, it is primarily the

 

 

107

daughter's story that is now untold.

The change in focus allows Wharton, herself now in her
early 60's, to return to the subject of a mature woman's
passion--a theme she had addressed earlier in The Reef and,
more obliquely, in The Age of Innocence. The crux of 1hr
Mother's Recompense is the much-discussed incest quote. As
Kate watches Anne and Chris embrace,

a furious flame of life rushed through her; in

every cell of her body she felt that same embrace,

felt the very texture of her lover's cheek against

her own, burned with the heat of his palm as it

clasped Anne's chin to press her closer. (221)

This passage has engendered much critical debate.2 But when
Kate wonders, "Was she physically jealous?", the answer is
clearly yes. In a letter to her long-time friend John Hugh
Smith, Wharton notes the importance of "the incest element"
in "justifying [Kate's] anguish," and continues, ”but I felt
it would be hardly visible in its exact sense to hgr, &
wanted to try to represent the business as it seemed to her,
culminating in the incest-vision when she sees the man

holding Anne in his arms" (Letters 480). Initiation into

sexuality would traditionally have been the role of one's

 

2For instance, Wolff says seeing the young lovers
embrace forces Kate to acknowledge that she "has violated
Nature's taboos....she has been...almost willing to
sacrifice Anne on the altar of her own propitiations to time
by attempting to engross all of the girl's affections into
herself" (Feast of Words 368-69). And Keiko Beppu, in
"Wharton Questions Motherhood,” argues that the scene's
significance is that Kate "realizes with a sense of
satisfaction as well as of disillusionment that she need no
longer expend herself for the welfare and happiness of her
child" (167). Neither reading, however, addresses Kate's
intensely physical involvement in this scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

108

husband. But Chris, not Anne's father, awoke Kate to her
sexuality, as he is now awakening Anne. For Kate to accept
a sexual relationship between Chris and Anne would therefore
be tantamount, psychologically, to accepting such a
relationship between her daughter and her husband. The way
Kate projects herself onto Anne in this scene, vicariously
sharing Anne's sensual experience, graphically illustrates
that in Kate's mind, her daughter is usurping her place.3
Kate's projecting herself onto Anne also reflects a
mother's intense psychological identification with her
daughter, an identification which, in Kate's case, begins
only upon her return to New York. In The Reproduction of
Mothering (1978), psychologist Nancy Chodorow argues that a
mother tends to experience her daughter "as an extension or
double of [the] mother herself, with cathexis of the
daughter as a sexual other usually remaining a weaker, less
significant theme" (109). Because Anne grew up away from
her, Kate never learned to view her as a "sexual other" at
all. Kate's "horror" at encountering Chris embracing Anne
is therefore magnified by the fact that the daughter she has
always viewed as a baby, in order to continue viewing

herself as youthful, is now the woman "her lover" prefers.

 

“Similarly, Adeline Tintner comments, "Why should a
mother in 1925 living for the past two decades in the most
sophisticated society in Europe regard [this situation] as
so horrifying? It can only be because Mrs. Clephane views
the lover as a husband and the coupling of the daughter and
the husband-figure becomes an incestuous act" (150). At any
rate, while she was in France Kate, who lived among groups
of American expatriates, was not immersed in French culture.

 

109

The wedding dress that Anne and Chris are admiring as
they embrace is in stark contrast to the physical intensity
of the scene. Both the dress, a "dazzle of whiteness," and
Anne's "narrow bed" symbolize her sexual purity. But
Wharton's narrative shift from the dress to the young
lovers' embrace signifies the transition to adulthood that
Anne is already making. And just as the lovers stand
"between Mrs. Clephane and the bed," Chris' presence in
Anne's life blocks any possibility that Kate might play a
mother's traditional role in establishing her daughter in
marriage.‘

Kate's anguish is compounded by the fact that she still
considers Chris her lover. Wharton has taken care, from the
beginning of the novel, to show that Qhri§_is the person
Kate really cares about-~no matter how much she would like
to think she is mostly concerned about Anne. At the novel's
opening, Chris is among Kate's waking thoughts, before she
gets the telegram announcing her mother-in-law's death and
the one from Anne, asking Kate to come live with her. After
the first telegram, as Kate wonders if she'll be allowed to
see "little Anne" now, her thoughts quickly return to Chris.
She even tries to determine Anne's age by working backward
from Chris'. In fact, using Chris as the reference point

from which she reckons everything continues to be Kate's

 

4This is a major point of contrast with Grace Aguilar's
The Mothgr's Recom ense, whose title Wharton apologizes "for
deliberately apprOpriating and putting to uses so different"
(Dedication, Wharton's The Mother's Recompense).

 

110

approach throughout the novel.5 When the second telegram
arrives, Kate's hope that it is from Chris makes Anne seem
"so far away, so invisible, so unknown," while "Chris of a
sudden had become so near and real again..." (10).

Kate dates her own existence from the time she met
Chris. "For the first time, when she met him, her soul's
lungs seemed full of air. Life still dated for her from
that day....At thirty-nine her real self had been born..."
(15).‘ At one point, Kate is disgusted to realize that
Chris and Anne are in her thoughts at the same time.
Although she thinks this has never happened before and "felt
as if she had committed a sort of profanation," Chris and
Anne have often been in her thoughts simultaneously, simply
because she seldom has Chris out of her mind (73).

Kate's view that Chris "inflicted on her the bitterest
pain she had ever suffered" (15) further belies her posture

that Anne is (or ever was) paramount in her life. In fact,

 

5Wharton clearly drew on her affair with Morton
Fullerton, which lasted from about 1908 to 1910, in her
depiction of Kate's relationship with Chris Fenno. Kate's
focusing on Chris echoes Wharton's response to Fullerton.
As Wharton wrote him near the close of their affair, "‘When
one is a lonely-hearted & remembering creature, as I am, it
is a misfortune to love too late, & as completely as I have
loved you. Everything else grows so ghostly afterward'"
(Colquitt 76).

6Wolff says that Kate “came into existence" when she
met Chris, and that Kate tries to create herself anew, first
as Anne's mother, then as "the woman who has refused Fred
Landers" (361, 364, and 370). Kate's inability to establish
her own identity separate from other people is reminiscent
of Newland Archer, who muses at one point, "‘What am I? A
son in law'" (hgg 215), and of Undine Spragg's attempts to
redefine herself by mirroring other people.

111

the subsequent action of the novel bears this out; Kate is
much more concerned with getting rid of Chris, if he is to
be part of her world in any role other than as her lover,
than she is with Anne's feelings. Later, during the night
before the wedding, Kate reflects that "her lover was going
to marry her daughter, and that nothing she could do would
prevent it" (241). Kate, who had waited so long for Chris
to say "‘Take me back'" (7) still thinks of him as her
lover--hgt her former lover. She simply cannot let go of
Chris or their relationship, "the central fact of her
experience.“

Kate is also disturbed by the intensity of her
daughter's passion. She had assumed she could manage Anne,
because she completely underestimates the strength of Anne's
feelings for Chris--another tremendous irony, given Kate's
own inability to forget him. In fact, Kate had deliberately
ignored the physical side of Anne's attraction for Chris,
once she knew who he was, until she was forced to confront
their passion. Fred Landers had earlier pointed out that
"‘Anne's a young woman of considerable violence of
feeling...of...of...In short, there's no knowing what she
might have ended by doing if we'd all backed you up in
opposing her'" (199). Wharton has already hinted at this
side of Anne; for instance, the paintings she did on her
trip to Washington (where she became engaged to Chris) are
"freer and more vigorous than any of her previous work”

(119). The comment recalls similar moments in other Wharton

 

112

novels, such as Anna Leath's intense awareness of the
physical world as she anticipates her marriage to George
Darrow, in The Reef, and Newland Archer's obsession with
anything Ellen Olenska may have touched, in The Age of
Innocence. Although Kate perceives Fred's reference to her
daughter's passionate nature as a reproach to herself (199),
he is right to accept a grown woman's passion for her
fiance. Kate cannot do so, because she can accept neither
Anne's adulthood nor the object of her passion.

Anne has remained a baby in Kate's mind because, in her
life on the Riviera, Kate disassociated herself from the
past in which she had had a child. In fact, the central
irony of the novel-—that Chris becomes involved with Kate's
daughter--can occur only because Kate never told him about
Anne. Thus Kate's denial of the role she later tries to
assume so wholeheartedly, the "part" of Anne's mother,
ultimately precludes her from successfully taking on that
role. When she berates Chris for becoming involved with
Anne, he rightfully points out, "‘you never spoke to me of
her--I never even knew you had a daughter'" (133).
Acknowledging the truth of Chris' words, Kate reflects that
she "had never been able" to tell anyone of Anne, whose name
was spoken only in "the depths of her heart" after her
second attempt to see her had failed (133). By focusing on
the Clephanes' refusal to let her see Anne many years ago,
Kate can see herself as the bereft mother, suffering

silently, rather than as careless of or completely alienated

113

from her child.7 And although Kate subsequently tries to
bridge the intervening years, her lack of the type of
knowledge of her daughter that daily contact brings prevents
her from knowing how best to address Anne's involvement with
Chris. As a result, Kate still can be Anne's mother only in
a symbolic sense.

Kate's continued attempts to position herself as Anne's
mother, with varying success, are extremely ironic.a
Throughout the novel, Kate has trouble keeping herself fixed
on this goal; she vacillates between roles, one moment
behaving like a child for Anne to nurture, and another like
a sexual rival to her daughter. Indeed, much of Kate's
position as Anne's mother is acting, and was so even when
Anne was still very young and Kate tried to see her. Once,
visiting New York, Kate learned that Anne was in Canada and
"dreamed of a dash to Canada, an abduction....She gave that
up in favour of a midnight visit (inspired by Anna Karenine)
to the child's nursery" (15). Kate's having looked to a
novel to see how to art is ironically appropriate for, in

fact, all of Kate's mothering is a fiction.

 

7In "Shame in Edith Wharton's The Mother's Recompense,"
Lev Raphael says, "It is not surprising that she keeps
Anne's existence a secret from her Riviera set, even when
Anne calls her back to New York: she could not bear the
sense of exposure which would cause her to reexperience the
overwhelming shame of her double abandonment..." (192).

6In Edith Wharton's Argument with America, Elizabeth
Ammons argues, "the subject of mothers who refuse to mother
blinds Wharton; she sacrifices Kate as a person to her
theoretical preoccupation with Kate the mother" (163). But
Ammons' reading misses much of the novel's irony, as she
views Wharton as affirming the value of motherhood.

114

Not that Kate is always aware of her role-playing. She
cannot admit even to herself that she deliberately abandoned
her child.

..."lost" was the euphemism she had invented,

because a mother couldn't confess, even to her

most secret self, that she had willingly deserted

her child. Yet that was what she had done; and

now her thoughts...were forced back upon the fact.

She had left Anne...with a dreadful pang, a

rending of the inmost fibres, and yet a sense of

unutterable relief, because to do so was to escape

from the oppression of her married life....So she

had put it at the time--so, in her closest soul

scrutiny, she had to put it still. (13)

Wharton's phrasing of this thought is important. Kate
remembers feeling "a dreadful pang" over leaving her three—
year-old, but in her own mind, she immediately amends this
to the more intense "rending of the inmost fibres"; even the
reference to "the" inmost fibres--rather than hers--suggests
that Kate's mind is seeking a formula to express the sort of
anguish a mother should feel upon separating from her child.
Even as she pretends to face what she had done, now that she
is returning to Anne, Kate continues to gloss over and
justify her abandonment. When she receives Anne's "summons"
to New York, Kate is "transfigured," as much because of the
opportunity to escape her meaningless life as because she
wants to be with her daughter. That Kate is largely
motivated by her desire to flee the Riviera is suggested by
her suddenly finding fault with the members of her "set,"
from "the vulgar fussy old woman" Mrs. Minity, to the

younger women, about all of whom "‘things' had been said"

(18, 23).

115

The artificiality of Kate's and Anne's attempt to be
mother and daughter is further demonstrated by the fact
that, in any nurturing sense, Anne does the mothering.
Finding Kate drooping on a couch after her arrival, Anne
puts an arm around her "protectingly" and scolds, "‘You must
never be tired or worried about things any more....Remember,
I'm here to look after you now....'" (45). Kate enjoys this
treatment; she "felt herself sinking down into a very
Bethesda-pool of forgetfulness and peace.” Anne's mothering
her is symbolically appropriate, since Kate had so long ago
rejected the mothering role. Kate muses, "it was so sweet
to be compelled, to have things decided for one, to be told
what one wanted and what was best for one" (45-46). After a
lifetime of running from her own choices, she is now happy
to be a child for a while. Kate's failure to see anything
odd about this role reversal is another symptom of her
denial, as both she and Anne pretend that Kate had no choice
in being separated from her daughter so many years ago.

Another oddity that doesn't seem to bother Kate is the
point everyone makes of noting how well she and Anne get
along. At the opera, as Kate and Anne admire each other,
Nollie Tresselton proclaims: ”‘You two were made for each
other'”--as if they were lovers or friends, rather than that
Anne was literally created bnyate and her father (64).
Later, Enid Drover tells Kate, "‘It's wonderful, my dear,
how you've done it....[Anne's] taken a tremendous fancy to

you'” (76). All of these statements of admiration and

 

 

116

encouragement serve to highlight the fact that Kate has had
no relationship with Anne. Yet Kate's gratification with
the idea that "Everyone noticed how beautifully it worked”
(76) indicates her desire to simply take over as her adult
daughter's companion. Kate quickly becomes used to playing
”the part of Anne's mother," even to the point of telling
herself that her relationship with this woman, who she
abandoned as a child and has not seen for eighteen years, is
"the one perfect companionship she had ever known, the only
close tie unmarred by dissimulation and distrust" (69).

The psychological flight from reality that such
thinking demonstrates parallels Kate's pattern of literally
running away. Through Kate's memories of Hylton Davies,
Wharton establishes that Kate has perpetually run away,
choosing new roles to play whenever she cannot face her
present situation. Kate recalls the man with whom she left
her husband as being "as unreal as somebody in a novel....he
had vanished into a sort of remote pictorial perspective,
where a woman of her name figured with him...herself as
unreal as a lady on a ‘jacket'" (14). Kate had
unfortunately chosen the role of Davies' mistress after
deciding that she could no longer play the part of John
Clephane's wife, a role which required "the continual vain
effort to adapt herself to her husband's point of view, to
her mother-in-law's standards, to all the unintelligible
ritual with which they barricaded themselves against the

real business of living" (58). This passage, so reminiscent

117

of Newland Archer's perception of his in-laws, is ironic,
given Kate's own perpetual flight from "the real business of
living."

Wharton shows the reader that Kate especially has
trouble facing her own aging. In her affair with Chris,
Kate had tried to seem younger than she was; during a week
alone with him in the Normandy countryside, she "dashed
herself with cold water and did her hair and touched up her
face before he was awake, because the early light is so
pitiless after thirty" (4). Self-conscious about their age
difference, Kate perceives Chris as having used it to his
advantage. When trying to determine how old he must be,
Kate reflects, "That boyish way of his, she had sometimes
fancied, was put on to make her imagine there was a greater
difference of age between them than there really was....And
of course she'd never been that dreadful kind of woman they
called a ‘baby-snatcher'" (9). Much later, as she struggles
to accept the idea of Chris' marrying Anne, she thinks,
"From the first she...had insisted...on her own sense of the
necessary transiency of the tie....Anything rather than to
be the old woman clutching at an impossible prolongation of

bliss" (219, my emphasis).9

 

9Like Kate, Wharton was the "older woman" in her affair
with Morton Fullerton. She wrote to Fullerton in August
1908 that she ”‘dreaded to be to you, even for an instght,
the "donna non piu giovane" ("the woman who is no longer
young"] who clings & encumbers'" (Colquitt 84). Wharton's
coming to terms with her affair so many years after it ended
may further explain her change in focus from the daughter's
to the mother's point of view in The Mother's Recompense.

 

 

118

Several years after her affair with Chris, Kate is
still trying to pass for a much younger woman. She
recognizes that she has done so when, after getting Anne's
telegram, she sees the "absurdly youthful" hat she'd
previously ordered and concludes, after an argument with the
milliner, that everyone views her as "one of the silly vain
fools who imagine they look like their own daughters" (17).
In her new role as Anne's mother, Kate seems to have
accepted her age. But she is gratified by allusions to her
having kept her good looks. When Enid Drover says "‘Anne
admires your looks so much,'" Kate feels a "glow of
satisfaction" that "the youth and elasticity she had clung
to so desperately should prove one of the chief assets of
her new venture" (76-77). Later, when Anne says "‘what a
beautiful mother you are!,'" she is referring to physical
beauty only: "‘I knew from an old photograph that you were
lovely; but I couldn't guess that you hadn't grown any older
since it was taken'" (123). But Kate, unperturbed by the
narrow meaning of Anne's exclamation, thinks ”What praise
had ever seemed as sweet?" (123)‘°

Yet even before she is forced to recognize the physical
attraction between Chris and Anne, Kate is clearly jealous

of her daughter's youth. Wishing to unburden herself after

 

1°Kate's enjoyment of this praise is another important
point of contrast between Wharton's The Mother's Recompense
and Grace Aguilar's earlier novel by the same title. In
Aguilar's novel, the mother basks in the praise of those
around her, not for her physical appearance, but for
successfully guiding her children through life.

 

119

first seeing Chris in New York, Kate imagines telling Anne
about their affair. She pictures Anne responding with a
"look of wonder...that said...‘You, mother--and ghri§?'" At
the thought of such a reaction, Kate decides "It was
necessary for her pride and dignity" that her past should
remain "unembodied" in Chris Fenno (105-06). Apparently
Kate thinks her daughter would be incredulous at the idea
that she could have been involved with a man young enough to
be in Anne's own social set.

Anne's persistent failure to guess that Chris and Kate
had had an affair, even in the face of Kate's strange
behavior, confirms Kate's perception. Anne's brief moment
of recognition occurs when she pushes Kate for a concrete
reason for hating Chris. When Kate blushingly responds, "‘I
don't-—hate him,'" Anne cries, "‘But then you're in love
with him--you're in love with him, and I've known it all
alongt'" (226) Anne, however, is easily dissuaded from this
painful knowledge. All Kate has to do to convince Anne that
the idea is absurd is to look her in the eye and say
"‘Annet'" with “a little shrug" (226-27).u Anne's
rejecting her realization that Kate had been involved with
Chris suggests that Anne cannot view her mother as a sexual
being, any more than Kate can accept the fact of her
daughter's passion.

Because of her jealousy, Kate's behavior, ostensibly

 

11Anne's willingness to have her suspicions so easily
allayed parallels Anna Leath's persistent denial of the idea
that George could be involved with Sophy, in The Reef.

120

directed toward saving Anne, is often simply vengeful. She
is quite willing to inflict on Chris the same kind of
“bitterest pain" he has caused her to feel, although she
never consciously admits this. This is "her“ lover, and the
truth about their affair is a “weapon" Kate wields over
Chris (241, 180). She takes great satisfaction in Chris'
discomfiture when she announces that she is "‘never going to
leave Anne'": "It had been almost worth the agony she had
bought it with to see the look in his eyes when he heard
that" (204). Kate's willingness to wound often extends
beyond Chris to Anne. Before the above confrontation, when
Nollie won't reveal where Chris is living, Kate feels "a
sort of fierce satisfaction in the thought" that Anne
doesn't want her to see him, for Anne has in effect
acknowledged a fear of Kate's power (172).

Even before Kate knows that Chris is Anne's suitor, her
desire to be included in the secret of Anne's romance is
couched in terms of a rivalry. Musing on "the man who had
been too shy to come into the [opera] box" one night and the
possibility of "losing" Anne to marriage, Kate reflects:
"Her task...was gradually, patiently to win back, of all she
had forfeited, the one thing she really valued: her
daughter's love and confidence"--an achievement that
presumably would keep Anne loyal to Kate, whatever her
romantic involvement (68-70). Kate considers discovering
who Anne is in love with a challenge, because he is

competition for Anne's affection; ”she might be able to live

121

out the rest of her days in peace between Anne and Anne's
husband. But the mere possibility of a husband made
everything incalculable again" (69).*9 Indeed, any suitor
would be a threat to Kate's new self-definition as "the
mother"--a precarious definition to begin with, not only
because of their long separation, but because of Kate's fear
of aging. She had told herself that "in this existence it
was Anne who mattered, not Anne's mother," but this is not
true once Chris is involved. The "blessed anonymity of
motherhood" is the last thing Kate wants (64). She wants
New York's forgiveness, earned with the passage of years,
without giving up her youth and beauty.

Once Kate recognizes that she can neither stop the
wedding nor accept it, her appearance ages rapidly: "People
were beginning to notice how tired and thin she looked. Her
glass showed streaks of gray in her redundant hair, and
about her lips and eyes the little lines she had so long
kept at bay" (229). Alone with Fred Landers, Kate remembers
a similar scene with Chris and thinks in retrospect, "How
young she had been then--how young!" (231) While she had
considered herself the "older woman" in her affair with
Chris, it is only when Kate realizes he really is going to

marry her daughter that she is truly forced to recognize her

 

‘zKeiko Beppu argues that Kate's anguish is caused by
the "highly charged condensation of time" in which Kate must
come to terms with the ”declaration" of independence that
Anne's engagement to Chris represents. This is one element
of Kate's problem, but Beppu's assertion that "The fact of
the marriage is the bone of contention, not necessarily the
man involved" overlooks Chris' importance to Kate (166).

122

aging. Later, when Fred admires Kate's hair, "at that
moment she hated it, as she did everything else that mocked
her with the barren illusion of youth" (238).

When Chris is a little late for the wedding, Kate
joyously reflects, "And she had called the sky indifferent!
But of course he was not here....She had always known that
she would wear him out in the end." She is so ecstatic at
the thought that Chris isn't coming, that she "suspected her
own [eyes] of shooting out rays of triumph" (245). Although
Kate briefly acknowledges that ”Anne's suffering would be
terrible," she concludes, "But she was young--she was young,
and some day she would know what she had been saved from..."
(245, Wharton's ellipsis). At Chris' arrival, Wharton
shifts from the irony of Kate's exulting in her daughter's
being left at the aisle to the poignancy of Kate's position.
Kate is to give Anne away, and once Fred has walked her down
the aisle, "The mother stood alone and waited for her
daughter" (246). The statement echoes Kate's position in
the incest scene, when she stood behind the unheeding lovers
"like a ghost" (221); both passages reflect Kate's total
estrangement from her daughter. Wharton further emphasizes
that once Kate gives Anne away, her role as ”the mother” is
over; all subsequent references to her in the narrative are
to "Kate” or to ”Mrs. Clephane."

Kate's attitude about Anne's wedding exemplifies her
egocentrism, a trait Wharton establishes from the beginning.

When Kate is first reunited with her daughter and is

123

travelling to the Clephane house with Fred and Anne, her
question is, "‘What do they think of mg?'" (30) She notes
Anne's ”shyness" and ”embarrassment" but, because she is
preoccupied with her own reception, Kate makes little effort
to learn about her daughter. In fact, Kate's only question
about their eighteen years of separation is "‘What does Anne
know?'" about the circumstances of Kate's leaving. Kate's
response is not surprising, given that when she first heard
from Anne, she could not even remember who her daughter's
co-guardian was (8).

Wharton shows the reader that, to keep up the illusion
that Anne was unscathed by her abandonment, Kate must
continually misinterpret situations. For instance, Anne's
keeping the old nursery because she "should never have felt
at home anywhere else” is undoubtedly a sign of insecurity,
but Kate is touched, as though the action were an untroubled
tribute to their time together there (33). Anne's sitting
room shows the absence of a mother's influence; it is “a
sober handsome room" that strikes Kate as more like a son's
study. Its masculine appearance is due to "Uncle Fred's”
decorating suggestions, as Anne explains. The fact reveals
the absence not only of her mother, but of any substantial
feminine guidance beyond that of Anne's grandmother, who is
remarked mainly in negative terms--for refusing to let Anne
ever see her mother or open an art studio (39).

When Anne gives Kate back her jewels, Kate thinks, "She

was rewarded for having given up her daughter; if she had

124

not, could she ever have known such a moment as this?" (65)
Kate's pleasure in this false recompense indicates her
continued focus on herself. Beyond momentary surprise that
Anne did not have the jewels reset for her own use, Kate
wastes no thought on what this gesture might mean for her
daughter. Kate experiences no guilt or remorse at this
moment. She disregards the psychological costs to Anne of
her mother's abandonment, focusing instead on her own
pleasure at Anne's thoughtfulness. Further, by imagining
that "others" had carried out the task of raising Anne "as
she could never have done," so that Anne is "perfect," Kate
lets herself off the hook; since Anne has turned out so
well, Kate assumes, her actions must have had little
negative effect on her (65, 36).

At the sight of Anne's painting on the wall, Kate
slips. "‘I didn't know you painted,'" she says, and ”the
abyss of all she didn't know about her daughter had once
more opened before her...." Kate recovers with "‘I mean,
not like thi§.'" But of course Anne is not fooled. In
fact, she doesn't expect Kate to know much about her, or to
even remember her. When Kate reminisces about Anne's
sitting before the fire as a child, Anne exclaims, "‘You
darling, to remember!'" Kate apparently sees nothing
strange about Anne's response. She simply enjoys "the young
warmth" of her embrace and assumes that "together they were
watching the little girl with the bush of hair coaxing the

sparks through the fender" (34-35).

H

 

 

 

125

When she later seeks Chris to tell him to leave Anne
and learns that he doesn't live with his employer, Kate
thinks:

perhaps [he's] actually living with some

unavowable woman? What a solution...to be able to

return to Anne with that announcement! It seemed

to clear the way in a flash--but as a hurricane

does, by ploughing its path through the ruins it

makes. (129)

But Kate isn't thinking of Anne at all; the "ruins" are her
emotions, for she "would never...be able to think evil of
Chris without its hurting her" (129). And after she has
blackmailed Chris into leaving, Kate assumes her pain is
greater than Anne's. "Well, the girl was young--time would
help....there could not be, in any woman's life, another
such hour as the one she had just lived through!” (140)

To prove Kate's self-centeredness, Wharton consistently
shows that she expects others to share her focus. For
instance, at the beginning of the novel, Kate sends her
daughter a telegram that says, ”‘Coming, Darling,'" as if
Anne would remember those words from her infancy (18). But
Anne doesn't remember Kate at all. Explaining how she
picked Kate out on the pier when she arrived from France,
Anne says, "‘I recognized mother too--from such a funny old
photograph...'" (31). Later, musing about her affair with
Chris, Kate wonders, ”When had there ever been a question of
what ghg wanted?" (91) Given Kate's history, her question
is doubly ironic. So far as the reader can tell, she has

done very much what she wanted all along. Perhaps the real

problem for Kate is that Chris left her; accustomed to

 

 

126

choosing for herself when to change roles, Kate could not
stop playing the part of Chris' lover after he left.

Kate's limited perspective causes her to perceive Chris
as ”cruel," when she forces him to choose between abandoning
Anne with no explanation, or having his entanglements
revealed to his mother, and when Kate makes vague charges
against Chris that make it hard for him to get a job. Kate
focuses on Chris' presumed cruelty rather than noting the
irony of her telling him to leave Anne, because Kate focuses
on he; "abandonment" by Chris. Earlier, as she had
considered the possibility of Chris' having an affair with
Anne's friend Lilla, Kate had thought:

Wasn't it most probably in pursuit of a new [love-

affair] that he had left [Kate]? To think so had

been...in spite of the torturing images evoked,

more bearable than believing he had gone because

he was tired of her. (108)

Yet Kate would rather have Anne think that Chris had left
her for precisely that reason, than risk Anne's suspecting
the truth.

The way in which Kate thinks about her past shows that
she denies responsibility for her actions. Just as she
tells herself she had "lost” her daughter, she thinks of
running away from her husband and child as "the mad course
allotted to her" (65). She remembers her flight in passive
terms: she had spoken to Hylton Davies of how she
"‘couldn't breathe'" in her marriage, "with the result that

two months later she was on his yacht" (13-14). Kate

implicitly asks Anne to comply with her view of the past by

 

127

speaking to Anne as if she hadn't left her voluntarily.
Confessing that she wasn't sure she recognized Anne on the
pier, Kate says, "‘You were just there...in me...where
you've always been...'" (31-32). On the Riviera, Kate had
avoided thinking about her actions by making sure she didn't
spend too much time alone:

...being face to face with her own thoughts was

like facing a stranger. Oppressed and

embarrassed, she tried to "make conversation" with

herself; but the soundless words died unuttered,

and she sought distraction in staring about her at

the unknown faces [of the crowd]. (17-18)

Much later, everyone seems so much the same at Chris'
and Anne's engagement dinner as when Kate first married,
that it is "as if she had become young again, with all her
desolate and unavoidable life stretching ahead to--this”
(202, my emphasis). Wharton uses the same phrasing in the
first chapter, as Kate wonders how she ended up in her
third—rate hotel on the Riviera (5). In both cases,
Wharton's text emphasizes, Kate does not see that her
actions led to these results. Kate's belief that she is a
passive figure upon whom life has acted is again evident in
the passive phrasing of her thoughts following Anne's
wedding, as she compares the present with her first day back
in New York: "It was curious," Kate thinks, "in what neatly
recurring patterns events often worked themselves out"
(249).

Wharton's use of the egocentric Kate for her center of

consciousness in The Mother's Recompense reduces the

potential impact of Chris as a villain and displaces him

128

from the narrative center. Kate operates with the same
double standard as does George Darrow in The Reef, Wharton's
1912 novel involving a relational triangle between two women
and a man. George decides that the woman he had an affair
with, Sophy Viner, is not even good enough to be governess
for his fiance's daughter, yet he sees no problem with
himself becoming the stepfather of that same child.
Similarly, while Kate Clephane cannot bear the thought of
Chris' marrying her daughter--or, before that, of his even
being in Anne's company as Lilla Gates' husband--Kate is
extremely relieved to discover that no one had known about
her affair with Chris and considers herself a perfectly
suitable companion for Anne (41).

When Kate orders Chris to leave, he asks if she thinks
a "‘past like that'" is "‘irrevocable.'" Ignoring the fact
that she shared "that" past with Chris, Kate explodes, "‘you
ask me this...with he; in your mind?'” (135) Kate's
attitude toward Lilla Gates further illustrates her double
standard. The thought of Lilla with Chris causes Kate to
feel "actual physical nausea" because Kate would like to see
the "impudent" Lilla, with her "dyed hair, dyed lashes,
drugged eyes and unintelligible dialect," as completely
different from herself, despite their both supposedly having
had extramarital affairs, and despite Kate's own
preoccupation with making herself appear youthful (94, 48-
50).

Kate misjudges both of the other people in her

129

relational triangle. In addition to underestimating the
tenacity of Anne's desire for Chris, Kate misreads Chris
himself. She assumes she can treat him as the careless,
drifting excitement-seeker she thinks she knew and can
influence him with a bribe or, when that doesn't work,
blackmail. What leads Kate to this error is her refusal to
read the story of Chris' life since she was with him.
Wharton takes great care to show that Chris has changed.
The most striking measure of Chris' maturing is his joining
the service. He is a decorated war hero; he has received
the Distinguished Service Medal and the French Legion of
Honor, awards which are mentioned at least twice (103, 170).
No doubt Wharton intends Chris' service record as a positive
reflection on his character, given her own involvement in
the war and her having been awarded the Legion of Honor.'9
Also impressive is Chris' behavior in the present of the
novel, at least compared to Kate's reliance on duplicity,
bribery, and blackmail in her desperation to end his
relationship with Anne. Chris keeps their "compact” by
going away, returning only when Kate's insinuations against
him have nearly "ruined" him (175-76).

Kate cannot see Chris clearly because he has become a
symbol for her. During Chris' and Anne's engagement dinner,
Kate reflects:

there was Chris himself, symbolizing what she had

flown to in her wild escape; representing, in some
horrible duality, at once her sin and its harvest,

 

”WW. 331-

130

her flight and her return. At the thought, her

brain began to spin again, and she saw her own

youth embodied before her in Anne, with Anne's

uncompromising scorns and scruples, Anne's

confident forward-looking gaze. (202-03)

In Kate's mind, Chris symbolizes her "other life," the
"confused intermediate life which now seemed so much more
remote" than her life with baby Anne (65). That is another
compelling reason why his presence in her new life as Anne's
mother is so unacceptable. Kate is determined to view her
life abroad as completely separate from the present, as if
she had never left her daughter. But Chris' presence belies
the idea that Kate's many years of "expiation" could undo
her actions (42). Although the action Kate focuses on is
her affair, Chris has also become the retribution for her
having abandoned her daughter; he is "the mother's“
recompense. For what Kate had flown to implicitly contains
what she flew ggehr-in addition to the weight of John
Clephane and his "non-conductive, non-explosive family," her
daughter Anne (203). Chris' symbolic importance for Kate
overrides her attempt to re—make herself as Anne's mother,
and, unable finally to banish Chris from her new life, Kate
feels that she must flee again.

Her moment of recognition with Anne at the dinner
suggests that Kate is feeling some empathy for her daughter.
"The mother" briefly appears overwhelmed with sympathy for
the blows Anne's innocence must inevitably suffer as she

faces adult life. But what is so upsetting for Kate is that

Anne will have what Kate did not—-a passionate love

 

 

131

relationship which does not require sacrificing her home or
lifestyle--and with Kate's lover. That this is what upsets
Kate is signalled by her perception of Anne's "scruples" and
her "confident, forward-looking gaze," which set Anne apart
so dramatically from the Kate whose youth she supposedly
embodies.

Anne's calling Kate "home" to New York at the beginning
of The Mother's Recompense is reminiscent of Charity
Royall's quest for her mother in Wharton's 1917 novel,
Summer. As Anne confronts her sexuality she, like Charity,
tries to come to terms with her own mother. Chodorow notes,
"Before she can fully develop extrafamilial commitments...a
girl must confront her entanglement in familial
relationships themselves," a process that focuses on the
daughter's relationship with her mother (135). Anne needs
to see Kate before she can complete this process and form a
permanent relationship with Chris." The story of Anne's
attempt to do so, and of her confronting her mother's
abandonment of her as a child, is the ”untold“ story behind
Wharton's narrative about Kate Clephane.

Anne, like her mother, appears to be very independent;
she keeps her own hours, establishes a studio, and takes
care of herself. But Wharton ironically contrasts the two
women's seeming independence. While Kate's was manifested

primarily in abandoning her husband and child, Anne's is

 

1‘Viewed in this way, the timing of Anne's engagement
to Chris seems as much a natural outcome of Kate's presence
as a plot convenience.

132

shown by her keeping the old ways when other people no
longer do; requiring, for instance, that her opera box
remain empty during the period of mourning for her
grandmother. Such social gestures exemplify the "memorial
manner" Anne's friends note in her (60). In fact, while
Kate sees only that Anne takes after old Hrs. Clephane,
Wharton seems to be emphasizing that Anne has compensated
for being different. Having grown up without a mother's
influence and protection, Anne shows herself faultless by
engaging in such extreme, antiquated social correctness.
Her "memorial manner" both establishes her as unlike her
mother and as having achieved proper socialization without a
mother's guidance.'°

This characteristic also provides an insight to Anne's
tenacity in protecting her engagement to Chris. In her
study of women writers' narrative techniques, Rachel Blau
DuPlessis says of marginalized characters in nineteenth-
century novels:

if a plot simply provides a character with access

to what must usually be taken for granted, the

atmosphere of gratitude will finally impede any

criticism from occurring....The critique of social

conditions that orphans symbolize...will be muted
by the achievement of the blessed state of

normalcy.... (Writing Beyond the Ending 9)

With the presence of both her mother and her fiance Anne,

like her literary predecessors, gains the appearance of such

 

1sEnid Drover and her daughter, Lilla Gates, present a
contrast to Anne's situation. Lilla, one of Wharton's
quintessential flappers, is anchored in society by the
presence of her very respectable mother, despite Lilla's
being divorced.

133

"normalcy"; when she tries to interfere with Anne's
engagement, Kate threatens both elements, and Anne rebels.
When Anne announces her engagement to Chris, Kate
responds by blackmailing Chris into doing the same thing to
Anne that she did eighteen years before. Although Anne is
as yet unaware of Kate's interference, the parallel between
the two situations is not lost on Anne, and this second,
unexplained abandonment crushes her. Unable either to
accept Chris' abrupt departure or to be comforted by the
woman who represents her first major loss, Anne announces
that her engagement is off and then withdraws into a "rigid
reserve" as "her soul seemed to freeze about its secret"
(148). Kate's answer to Anne's pain is for the two of them
to run away, as she always has before. But running away
does not work for Anne. One evening abroad, Anne cries out,
"‘All this beauty and glory in the world--and nothing in me
but cold and darkness!‘" (149) Anne does, however,
eventually seek comfort from her mother. She asks Kate what
Chris could think has come between them, but Kate's need to
keep Anne from the truth--along with her pain at being
viewed as an ”obstacle" by Chris--leads her to again respond
with inadvertent cruelty: "‘You can only conclude that he
gave you back your freedom because he wanted his'” (151)."
Kate's delusion that her "‘little Anne'" had been

essentially undamaged by her mother's abandonment is finally

 

16Kate is misreading the situation. Her insistence
that Chris leave Anne, not Kate herself, is the "obstacle"
to which Chris refers.

134

shattered when, in response to Kate's refusal to write to
Chris on her behalf, Anne cries: "‘why should you care what
happens to me? After all, we're only strangers to each
other.'" Stunned, "The mother dared not speak; she feared
her whole agony would break from her with her first word”
(152-53). Kate is agonized by Anne's refusal to comply any
longer with her fantasy that she could suddenly become
Anne's mother after an absence of eighteen years.

When they return to New York, Anne goes to Baltimore to
see Chris and returns to tell Kate that the maid had
complained of a prior woman visitor's "‘making a scene.'"
Kate's verbal slip (a reference to "‘the negress'" maid)
reveals to Anne that she was that woman. Anne says, ”‘You
made him break our engagement....And all this time...you let
me think it was because he was tired of mei'" When Kate
responds that she "‘didn't think he could make you happy'"
and invokes her right to intervene as Anne's mother, Anne
says, "‘What right? You gave up all your rights over me
when you left my father for another man!‘" She adds, ”‘It
was my own fault to imagine that we could ever live together
like mother and daughter. A relation like that can't be
improvised in a day'" (160-61).

Anne has only stated the obvious, but the fact that she
quickly relents reveals the desperate desire of the
abandoned girl to please her mother, so that she will not
leave again. When Kate follows Anne to the Drovers' after

this confrontation, Anne tries to cajole her into accepting

135

her relationship with Chris and agreeing to "‘just be the
perfect friends we were before'" (186). Anne says "with a
half—whimsical smile" what would be too painful to say
otherwise; that "‘Mothers oughtn't ever to leave their
daughters.'" Anne says that it was Fred's idea to ask Kate
to return to New York and that she "‘didn't know how well I
should behave to my new mother, or whether she'd like
me....'" She tells Kate that she was "‘grateful to you for
coming, and more and more anxious to make you forget that we
hadn't always been together'" (186—87, my emphasis).

In her effort to keep her mother from leaving her, Anne
has already bestowed gifts upon her, in the manner of an
insecure child who assumes she must buy others' friendship.
In addition to giving Kate back her jewels, Anne even offers
her the house. "‘I want you to stay here always, you know;
I want the house to belong to you,'" she tells Kate, just
before announcing her engagement to Chris (63, 123).
Evidently Anne had hoped that if she gave her mother a place
to stay, she EQELQ "‘stay a1ways.'" Explaining her feelings
about their argument to Kate, Anne continues:

"And then, suddenly, the great gulf opened again,

and there I was on one side of it, and you on the

other, just as it was in all those dreary years

when I was without you; and it seemed as if it was

you who had chosen again that we should be

divided...." (187)

Anne recognizes what Kate has denied: that Kate eheee to
leave her, however compelling her reasons. Yet, even having

revealed her pain and vulnerability, Anne continues to try

to please her mother; the purpose of her confession is to

 

136

explain why "‘in my unhappiness I said dreadful things to
you...'" (187).

Although the limits of Kate's experience in nurturing
her child cause her to respond "as a mother would to a child
that has fallen and hurt itself," their conversation forces
Kate finally to confront the impact her leaving had on Anne
more than eighteen years before. As a result, Kate
experiences more empathy and genuine concern for her
daughter in this scene than at any other point in the novel.
Kate feels "as if it were her own sobs that were shaking her
daughter's body" and “no longer knew what she herself was
feeling" because "All her consciousness had passed into
Anne," whose ”young anguish, which is the hardest of all to
bear, must be allayed" (187-88). These thoughts are in
sharp contrast to Kate's typical belief that her pain is
more devastating.

But this moment fails to change the relationship
between Kate and Anne, both of whom perceive themselves as
separated from each other by an abyss or gulf. Anne's
physical overtures toward Kate can be seen as her attempt to
bridge this "gulf" but, because Chris is between them,
Anne's efforts cannot succeed. For Kate, the abyss includes
everything about her life since she left Anne, including her
ignorance of Anne's life and her affair with Chris. Kate
perceives herself as endlessly skirting this abyss,
constantly in danger of falling in and disappearing forever.

When she first suspects Anne's being involved with Chris,

V'r'it-‘ ‘p, ,.—_ -

137

"the shock of finding herself for a second over that abyss
sent her stumbling back half-dazed to the safe footing of
reality" (115). Similarly, her future with Anne is a
"precipice" into which she must not look, for "a glance
forward or down might plunge her into the depths." Because
this abyss of her past and future is so threatening to Kate,
she cannot bear to reach across it to truly embrace a
relationship with her daughter.

Kate's early assumption that she would be able to close
the distance between herself and Anne as easily as she could
walk into her old house--"with the ease of a long-absent
mistress"--indicates her failure to revise her mental image
of Anne with the passage of time. During their years of
separation, Kate's primary memory of Anne was of a three-
year-old calling: "‘Mummy--Mummy——I want my hhhhyi'" (18)
The image is of an imperious but easily pacified child.
Because of this powerful image, Kate expects Anne to have
remained in the same posture all of her life, to have spent
her life focused on her mother,'waiting until she finally
answers "‘Coming, Darling,'" eighteen years later (18). But
Kate discovers that, unlike the toddler, the adult Anne
cannot be pacified by her mother's mere presence. Finding
that Anne's "round child's body" cannot be "disengaged" from
her adult figure, Kate relinquishes her initial urge to
"touch her hair, stroke her face,...kiss her over and over
again,” to feel the child's body that "she had so long

continued to feel against her own...as the amputated feel

 

138

the life in a lost limb" (30). Instead, Kate waits for Anne
to take the initiative. At one point, when "Anne's hand
stole out to her," Kate thinks, "How many old breaches the
touch healed)", as though Anne, not Kate, had caused those
breaches (122).

Kate's awareness of the great distance between herself
and Anne that she cannot cross parallels her sense of her
standing with Chris. When Chris tells her that he considers
himself free of his promise to leave Anne, Kate "stretched
out her hands as if to catch him back,” and "saw herself in
another scene, stretching her arms to him in the same
desperate entreaty, with the same sense of her inability to
move him, even to reach him" (176). Kate's inability to
reach either Anne or Chris, juxtaposed against her
witnessing the young couple's embrace in the incest scene,
symbolizes that Kate is irrevocably an outsider to their
lives. Ultimately, the abyss signifies that Kate is as
completely separated from both Anne and Chris as the dead
from the living. Wharton had anticipated this irreparable
separation early in the narrative. When Kate momentarily
thinks the telegram announcing "‘Mrs. Clephane dead'” refers
to her, she is more right than she knows (7-8). For the
subsequent action shows that she must remain dead to Anne,
at least as her mother. And her memory of Anne's calling
for her "Mummy" is also ironically appropriate; Kate has
been like a mummy, not a mommy, to her child.

Yet despite the narrative's positioning of Kate as

139

outsider, Wharton suggests that as women, Kate and Anne may
share similar limitations on their happiness. Early in the
novel, Wharton draws the reader's attention to Anne's
kunstlerromane." The importance of Anne's work is shown
not only by her having a studio and keeping regular hours
there, but also by the fact that her studio is located
outside of her house, that is, separate from domesticity.
The lack of furnishings in the studio confirms this. Yet
there are hints that Anne's artist self will end with her
marriage. For instance, telling Kate about Chris' military
honors, Anne concludes, "‘But he never talks of all that;
all he cares about is his writing'” (103-04). The specific
medium through which Chris defines himself as artist has
changed; painting was his passion when he was with Kate (4,
34). As Patricia Meyer Spacks notes, Chris' creativity is
"attested by assertion rather than accomplishment" (The_
Female Imagination 250). While Anne works at her craft
daily (like Wharton herself), Chris hehhe about writing.
The setting of this discussion-~as Anne cleans up and
puts away the tools of her art--lends an ominous character
to Anne's observation that is easily missed as the reader
speculates on Anne's relationship with Chris. As far as we
know, for Anne, as DuPlessis would say, "Soon after she

accepts the man in the love plot, the female hero becomes a

 

'7Wolff also notes that Anne as "the image of woman as
potential artist" is the submerged, undeveloped narrative in
The Mother's Recompense (“Behind the Lines," Revisions
conference).

 

 

140

heroine, and the story ends" (8). Anne is as likely to
become the background to Chris' writing as her mother was to
his painting. These suggestions that Anne's married life
will entail less than perfect happiness enrich the novel's
irony. Neither the prodigal mother nor the proper daughter
who gets her way will likely find lasting happiness.

Up to the day of the wedding, Kate struggles with the
idea that she should tell Anne about her affair with Chris.
When Kate goes to arrange the wedding date with the
minister, she explains her "friend's" situation to him on
the spur of the moment. Dr. Arklow's initial, horrified
response is, "‘it is her duty to tell her daughter,'”
because "‘Such a shocking situation must be avoided...at all
costs'" (211). But he modifies his position and gives Kate
a way to escape telling Anne about her affair when he says,
"‘The thing in the world I'm most afraid of is sterile
pain....I should never want any one to be the cause of
that'" (212). Kate consciously recognizes that Anne is the
one the rector intends to be spared such pain; but
subconsciously, Kate applies his words to her own flight
from feeling.

...once the girl knew the truth, her healthy

youth might so revolt from Chris's baseness,

Chris's duplicity, that the shock of the

discovery would be its own cure. But when the

blow had fallen, when Anne's life had crashed

about her, and the ruins been cleared away--what

then of her mother? Why, her mother would be

buried under those ruins; her life would be over;

but a hideous indestructible image of her would

remain, overshadowing, darkening the daughter's
future. (214)

Jun-'7': u ~w~

141

The reference to "ruins" recalls the earlier passage in
which Kate contemplates the emotional "ruins" she suffers
when she thinks "evil” of Chris (129). Here, as in that
previous passage, Kate is really focused on herself. That
she is is confirmed in the way in which Anne becomes an
abstraction, as Kate imagines ”the daughter's" future. Her
response to Dr. Arklow's words is another symptom of Kate's
self-centeredness; she's more than willing, despite what she
wants to believe about herself, to inflict pain on Anne if
doing so will save he; pain.

Kate approaches Fred's marriage proposal in much the
same way. She is ambivalent at best about marrying him.
She had viewed him as the friend to whom she may eventually
unburden herself about her affair with Chris, so her first
thought when he proposes is "now I shall never be able to
tell him--never!" (199-200) Kate doesn't immediately answer
Fred's proposal. She decides to marry him only when she
needs to give Anne a reason for refusing to stay with the
newlyweds, in order to steer Anne's mind clear of the truth
about her and Chris (226-27). Having made the decision to
marry Fred as she makes the announcement, Kate reflects
merely, "‘Poor Fred! Well--if it's what he wants--'", and
then returns immediately to what ehe wants: "all she now
wanted, was never again to see that dreadful question in
Anne's eyes. And she had found no other way of evading it"
(228). As this passage indicates, Kate's deciding to marry

Fred is an expediency, a way out of a threatening

142

conversation. Kate's ambivalence about her decision is
evidenced by her insisting that Anne not tell anyone; by
making it their "secret," Kate can change her mind more
easily than if everyone knew of her engagement (227).

Wharton makes it clear that Kate does not love Fred:
"she reflected with self-derision that all her suicidal
impulses seemed to end in the same way; by landing her in
the arms of some man she didn't care for" (228). Rather
than considering the implications of her attitude for Fred,
Kate distances herself from her situation, much as she had
previously denied the impact of her abandoning Anne.

Waiting for Fred to visit her on the night before Anne's
wedding, Kate "felt a curious sense of aloofness" at the
thought of marrying him (236). When he arrives, Kate
wonders, "How would the evening ever drag itself to an
end?", and the thought of addressing Fred's proposal is as
"intolerable" as discussing Anne's wedding (238).

Still unwilling to accept her aging, Kate dislikes
Fred's allusions to their both being middle-aged (237). She
notes that Fred ”had the deliberate movements of the
elderly," but "Her own body still seemed so supple, free and
imponderable” (237—38). And when she agrees to marry him
and he rushes to embrace her, Kate "shrank back a little,
not from reluctance but from a sense of paralyzing
inadequacy. ‘It's I who am old now,‘ she thought with a
shiver" (240). Kate feels old in experience compared to her

friend, but the narrative makes it clear that the thought of

 

 

143

living out her life with Fred, with the “click of [his] key"
in the door each day and his "honest boot-tips" before her
fire every night, is what's most aging to Kate (243, 239).
Kate's thoughts about Fred suggest that her sudden
realization that she would "have to tell him" about her
affair with Chris is prompted by her need to escape their
marriage. Kate's own consciousness skirts this motive when
she thinks, "Whether she married him or not seemed a small
matter in comparison. First she must look into those honest
eyes with eyes as honest" (251). When Fred realizes what
she is trying to tell him, "he seemed years older," and Kate
reflects, "Sterile pain--it appeared that she was to inflict
it after all" (255). Assuming Fred will no longer want to
marry her, Kate is satisfied to have "his pain and his
pity," for "the centre of her wretchedness seemed the point
at which they were meant to meet." The thought shows that
Kate remains focused on her affair with Chris and expects
Fred to do the same. Indeed, she is so shocked when Fred
still wants her, that she says, "‘Don't you see that I can't
bear any more?'" (259) Relieved to have someone finally
share her burden, Kate cannot view the only other person who
knows about the most important relationship in her life in
any other terms. This is why, at the end, Kate reflects:
"[Fred] had overcome his strongest feelings...he had held
out his hand to her, in the extremity of her need,...and she
had blessed him for it and stood fast on her own side" (271-

72).

 

144

Kate's fleeing Fred is another instance of her running
away.1° Her relationship with Lord Charles, back on the
Riviera, confirms her need to keep free of commitments.
"Marry him? God forbid!....What she most wanted of him was
simply to fill certain empty hours...” (267). When Dr.
Arklow (now a bishop) visits the Riviera, he tells Kate she
can marry Fred without returning to New York; "‘He would be
prepared to begin his life again anywhere'" (270). But in
addition to her desire to stay free, Kate prefers to dwell
on her memory of Fred's understanding, rather than move
beyond that moment, as she would have to do as his wife.
Just as Newland Archer enshrines his memory of Ellen in The_
A e of Innocence, Kate enshrines her memory of that moment
with Fred, "shutting away in a little space of peace and
light the best thing that had ever happened to her“ (272).

Wharton's epigraph from g;ehe;hehe_ghhehhg, ”Desolation
is a delicate thing," sheds additional light on the novel's
ending. A delicate thing needs tending; so by shutting
herself off from Fred, Kate can tend and preserve--and focus
on-—her desolation, rather than accept the risks involved in
a real relationship.‘9 But the fact that Kate's doing so is

a poor substitute for genuine involvement with people is

 

‘°Discussing the novel's ending, Raphael says, "Kate's
return to France is anything but positive and hopeful
because it caps a lifetime marked by hiding, silence, and
flight" (188).

'°Along the same line, Wolff says pain ultimately
becomes the thing that confirms Kate's existence. "If she
were to accept [Fred], she would be plunged into time and
change and the compromises of reality” (370).

H

 

 

145

indicated by the way ”her loneliness came down on her like a
pall" when she tries to explain herself to Dr. Arklow (271).

The title of The Mother's Recompense has typically been
read as referring to Kate's punishment for abandoning Anne.
Kate perceives her experience this way; she tells Fred that
Anne "‘said I'd given up any claim on her...when I...left
her years ago. And so she wouldn't listen to me. That was
my punishment: that I couldn't stop her'" from marrying
Chris (256). Of course, if Kate had not left her husband
and child and eventually had an affair with Chris, she would
have no reason for opposing the marriage in the first place.
But the title also refers to "the mother's” recompense he
her daughter. Kate had returned to New York with the
mistaken idea that she could repay Anne for having abandoned
her, simply by becoming the "perfect" companion. The
denouement is therefore tragic not only because Kate cannot
come to terms with a relationship with Fred, but because
Kate, despite her hopes, could not directly recompense her
daughter for her abandonment.

Yet Anne does receive a recompense of sorts. Kate's
returning to New York allows Anne to resolve her feelings
toward her, which in turn frees Anne to commit herself to
Chris. Then, once Anne and Chris are engaged, Kate's
interference only serves to strengthen Anne's determination
to marry him. Kate's presence in New York at this point in
Anne's life, and her failure to ever tell Chris that she had

a daughter, combine to create a situation in which "the

146

mother" in effect gives her lover to her daughter, in spite
of herself. Ironically, then, Chris is ultimately Kate's

recompense to Anne.

 

 

Chapter Five
Passion and Possession in

The Children

In her 1928 The Children, Wharton returns to a male
center of consciousness' dichotomous views of the two women
he alternately desires. But while in previous novels in
which Wharton uses this framework the major women characters
are only metaphorically "children" vs. adults, in The,
Children, Wharton juxtaposes a fifteen-year-old girl against
the middle-aged Rose Sellars. Uncomfortably aware of his
own aging, Martin Boyne escapes into a world of children,
only to be forced to confront his age when young Judith
Wheater fails to see him as the potential lover he longs to
be for her. Boyne has much in common with Kate Clephane of
The Mother's Recom ense, also uncomfortable with aging, and
with many of Wharton's male characters, whose passions are
strongest for the women who are beyond their reach.

The opening scenes of The Children are strongly
reminiscent of the beginning of The Reef. Like George
Darrow, Martin is enroute to a recently widowed woman who he
believes he is in love with but has not seen in many years,
to ask her to marry him, now that she is finally free. Also
like George, Martin is easily distracted from his purpose.

Darrow becomes sexually involved with another woman when he

147

148

is enroute to Anna Leath; Martin becomes involved with the
Wheater children while on his way to Rose. The parallel is
instructive, for just as George vacillates between his
perceptions of Sophy Viner as the object of his passion and
a "child," so Martin wavers between his desire to possess
Judith sexually and his recognition of her youth.1

From the first, Boyne feels a confused attraction
toward Judy. He has difficulty trying to "situate her in
time and space," and his efforts at thus "cataloguing" her
are complicated by the way in which she seems so different
when she is with the children than when she is away from
them (36). Forced into an adult role with the children,
Judy behaves accordingly in their presence. Away from them,
she simply relaxes and behaves like the teenager that she
is. But Boyne, who has been bemoaning the fact that
"adventure...perpetually eluded him," views these different
sides of Judy as making her mysterious-~and therefore
interesting. Coinciding with this process of endowing Judy
with mysterious qualities, Martin increasingly disparages
Rose Sellars. Her very "perfection" becomes a weakness in
Boyne's eyes, as he compares her experienced grace with
Judy's childish tactlessness.

The Children begins with Boyne's looking forward to the
possibility of finally possessing Rose, the recently widowed

woman he had unsuccessfully pursued when she was married.

 

1Carol Wershoven compares Sophy Viner and Judith
Wheater, in The Female Intrgder in the Novels of Edith
Wharton (112, 119—20).

 

149

But he has not seen her in five years, and he travels toward
her with a feeling of "prolonged apprehension" at the
"fateful uncertainty" of what will happen between them (3).
When he meets Judith Wheater, he soon begins comparing her
with Rose, to the latter's detriment. Boyne realizes:

He could never think of [Rose] as having been

really young, immaturely young, like this girl

about whom they were exchanging humorous letters,

and who, in certain other ways, had a precocity of

experience so far beyond Mrs. Sellar's. (39—40)

Being "immaturely young" hardly seems like a positive trait,
but it becomes so simply because it is a quality Rose lacks.
Yet Boyne's inability to imagine Rose as young is juxtaposed
against the youthful aspects of her that he notes when he
finally meets with her. He perceives that "Freedom of
spirit and of body had mysteriously rejuvenated her" (she's
wearing shorter skirts than were the style when he last saw
her), and he "found her prettier and younger than when they
had parted" (85). Wharton takes care to present additional
evidence of Rose's vitality; for instance, she is a
"tireless walker" and is "proud of her light foot and firm
muscles" (85).

Although these qualities are more attactive than the
immaturity Martin sees in Judith, Rose's vibrant
youthfulness threatens to interfere with Martin's need to
distance Rose and keep her asexual. Boyne needs Rose to
remain "aloof", for "In the course of his life so much easy
love had come his way...that he needed to feel there was one

woman in the world whom he was half—afraid to make love to"

H

 

150

(84). In other words, Boyne needs for Rose to remain on the
pedestal where he had long ago placed her, after failing to
break her "sternly imposed will" and convince her to have an
affair with him while she was married (84). Confronted with
a woman in whom he found that "Every change in her was to
her advantage," and who offers "no resistance," Boyne's
"passion lay with folded wings" (85).

Boyne imagines this will be his response "just at
first," but in fact, he is unwilling ever to let Rose off of
her pedestal. As the woman he could not have, Rose had
represented perfection; "each time he returned, she had
simply added a little more to herself, like a rose unfurling
another petal" (39). But now that she is available, even
her "perfection" begins to irritate Boyne. He begins to
-find fault with many of the qualities that make Rose
attractive. Early in the novel, for example, Rose slips
away from the hotel dining room so that he and Judith can
talk privately, when the children first arrive in Cortina.
"Damn tact!" is Martin's response to her courtesy. And
while he had previously appreciated her "consistency and
continuity," Martin begins to see Rose and her life as
"arranged" (39, 38). As an emblem of perfection Rose can
scarcely be human, much less sexual.

Since no living person can be perfect, however, Boyne
increasingly perceives Rose as a "ghost." Wharton prepares
for this with some of Boyne's first thoughts about Rose; he

is going to her to "discover what it was that he had found

151

so haunting" in her (40). As the novel makes increasingly
clear, it was Rose's inaccessibility that Boyne found
haunting. When he first climbs up to the chalet to meet
with Rose after so many years, he "saw his problems float
away from him like a last curl of mist swallowed up in the
blue behind the peaks." Boyne attributes his tranquility to
"this wonderful resurrection of a life he had secretly
thought dead" (82). But the tranquility of this
"resurrection" cannot last once Martin's and Rose's initial
meeting has passed and they must begin to deal with each
other and their relationship. In fact, the major problem to
which this passage refers is Boyne's desire to, by his own
admission, "'have it both ways.'" Although he ostensibly
rejects this "craving," Boyne's subsequent behavor shows
that he has failed to achieve "the moral support of
believing that the woman who had once seemed to fill his
needs could do so still"--a sentiment he feels before even
being reunited with Rose. She had already become an
"embalmed mummy" to Boyne, who "the live Rose Sellars" he
meets on the mountain ostensibly, but never really, replaces

(82).‘2

 

2In "Edith Wharton's Erotic Other-World," Virginia L.
Blum notes Freud's study of "the nineteenth-century man's
inability to find sexual and emotional fulfillment in a
single woman." This inability, Blum says, is "an
integrative failure repeatedly manifested by Wharton's male
characters," and usually results in these characters'
preference for a woman who is "dead" to them, "a living
woman being too difficult and threatening" (12—14). In this
sense, Boyne's perceptions of Rose are similar to George's
view of Anna in The Reef, and especially to Newland's

perception of Ellen in The Age of Innocence.

152

When Martin and Rose kiss for the first time, Martin
thinks, "‘It will be so much easier now to consult her--
she'll understand so much better'" (90). "He didn't quite
know why he felt that; perhaps because the merging of their
two selves seemed to include every claim that others could
have on either of them." Although he had previously had
misgivings about how Rose would respond to his involvement
with the Wheater children, Boyne assumes that "now it was
enough that she had him in common, and must share the burden
[of the children's problem] because it was his" (90). His
sense that Rose will enter into his concerns in perfect
harmony with him suggests that Boyne subconsciously expects
their kiss to awaken Rose, like a sleeping beauty, to his
world, his view of things.8 That expectation is most
appropriate, for Sleeping Beauty is essentially dead until
the prince's kiss awakens her, just as Rose is essentially
dead--a ghost--to Boyne.

But Rose's annoying habit of dealing in realities
thwarts Martin's hopes of perfect communion. Returning from
the Wheaters with news of a temporary reprieve for the
children, Boyne tells Rose he's been made the children's
trial-guardian. When she asks him to explain what that
means, Boyne thinks, "To Judith and Terry....He would only
have to say: ‘It's all right,‘ and be smothered in hugs and

jubilations....But here sat lovely Logic..." (172). Boyne's

 

aWharton also draws on Sleeping Beauty in The Reef.
See Elizabeth Ammons (ggith Wharton's Argument with America
79-84).

 

 

153

irritation with Rose's response indicates his true view of
communion: for Rose to place an unquestioning, child-like
trust in him, rather than using her own mind.

Rose's reasonableness also unsettles Boyne because she
refuses to join in his escapist fantasy of saving the
children from their parents. Certain that Rose is jealous
of Judith--at the same time that he insists to himself she
can have no reason to be jealous—-Boyne sees an ulterior
motive in Rose's very sensible suggestion that they adopt
Terry and Blanca--Terry who, being sickly and having been
rejected by his father in favor of Chip, "‘needs care and
sympathy more than any of them,'" and Blanca, who is Terry's
twin (251). "If she had really loved him," Boyne reflects,
"would [Rose] not have entered into his feeling about the
little group, and recognised the cruelty of separating
them?" (252) Yet Rose's letter, which outlines the reasons
why they cannot adopt the other children, is perfectly
right.‘ She notes that Judith is nearly of age, that the
Wheaters would never give up Chip, and that the other
children's natural parents would not consent to their
adoption by outsiders (250-51). Ironically, Martin is
irritated with Rose's "infernal air...of thinking away
whatever it was inconvenient to admit"--in this case, his
purpose of keeping the children together--when in fact, this

is what Boyne has done all along. He has refused to admit

 

“Wershoven accepts Boyne's view of Rose and concludes
that Rose behaves with "positive malice" toward her "rival,"
Judith (115).

15L»

the impossibility of his keeping the children together in
any more than a temporary way, despite his relief at every
new "reprieve" (252-53).

His position places Boyne at the opposite extreme from
the children's parents. While the parents are careless of
the children, Boyne steps far beyond his bounds in his
desire to help Judy keep them together. Boyne agrees to
watch over the run-away brood without informing the Wheaters
of their whereabouts; he asks Grandma Mervin to adopt the
children, without anyone's knowledge or consent; and he
even hides the children away at a remote villa, when
Judith's having been summoned to Venice creates a risk of
"being run down by an outraged parent" (315). In fact, the
latter action amounts to kidnapping.

The extremes to which Boyne is willing to go indicate
he is not thinking clearly. His horror at the Wheaters' and
other parents' lifestyles only partly explains his actions;
it is his desire for Judith that compels Boyne. His
protecting the children thus stems from motives just as
selfish as their parents' neglecting them. Rose sees the
situation in its true light the first time Martin considers
running away with the children, and he resents her for doing
so. When Judith first brings them all to Cortina, her
arrival is followed by a letter to Boyne from Cliffe
Wheater, asking if they are there. To Boyne's idea that he
take the children away, Rose responds "with a little silken

laugh," "‘Then you're a child yourself, dear. How long do

155

you suppose it will be before you're run down? You'll only
be making things worse for the children—-and for yourself'"
(137).

Rose's allusion to the legal risks of Boyne's
contemplated action belies his perception of her as out of
touch with the world. Boyne assumes Rose would not be able
to understand the children's situation, yet, ironically, he
tries to shield her from learning about their world in order
to understand it. When he contemplates introducing Rose to
Judith, "Boyne did not see how any good will on either part
could bridge the distance between Mrs. Sellars's conception
of life, and Judith Wheater's experience of it" (124).5 Yet
Rose has a clearer grasp of the situation than Boyne, as her
more practical response indicates. The logical extension of
Boyne's increasing disgust with Rose's presumed innocence is
to prefer the world Judith has known to Rose's--a choice
that, with his disdain for that world, Boyne would hardly
make on a conscious level. As Newland Archer does with May
in The Aqe of Innocence, Martin assumes that Rose cannot
understand the world as he does; but in both cases, it is
actually the man who is the innocent. Just as Newland
misses May's role in getting rid of Ellen, so Martin
underestimates Rose, at the same time that he is the one who

is alligned with a group of children, and he has spent much

 

sSimilarly, The Reef's George Darrow self-righteously
bemoans Anna's supposedly being "too fine" to understand the
experiences of a Sophy Viner--experiences that only become
romanticized when contrasted to Anna's presumed ignorance of
the world.

156

of his life outside of society.6

Wharton uses gifts in this novel as a metaphor for
physical and sexual possession. When Zinnia LaCross visits
her daughter, Zinnie is as much interested in the present
she hopes for as she is in her mother herself--an attitude
Zinnia has obviously encouraged. Having watched Zinnia
leave the garden (she's gone to get her husband from the
gondola), Zinnie says: "‘She hasn't gone away without seeing
her own little Zinnie, has she?....Did she bring a present
for me? She always does'" (67). Giving her daughter a
present is Zinnia's way of making a claim on her, in
competition with Joyce Wheater. Zinnia makes little effort
to hide her motive; she suggests that Blanca should look at
the pearls she's given Zinnie "‘under the microscope, and
then tell you if they're false, like your momma's'” (73).
Zinnia's childish pleasure in flaunting her wealth before
these kids further indicates that she views her own material
possessions as the level on which to compete with Joyce for
her daughter's loyalty. She makes a point of telling Zinnie
that, unlike Joyce, "‘movie queens don't have to wear fake
pearls'" (74). And in return for bestowing gifts on her
daughter, Zinnia views Zinnie as a possession to be used for
her own purposes; her reason for visiting at all is to

"‘show Wrenny [her husband] that I can have a baby if I

 

6Wershoven comments, "Having been a wanderer, a waif,
himself for so long, he [Boyne] identifies with these waifs"
(117). Yet this fact does not make him any less of an
innocent in his dealings with regard to them.

 

 

 

157

choose'" (65).

A later, parallel scene illustrates both Martin's focus
on Judith and his propensity for inferring Rose's thoughts.
On his return from seeing the Wheaters in Venice, Boyne
presents Rose with an engagement ring he decides is "utterly
commonplace," which he had bought in a hurry because he had
spent too much time Choosing an antique pendant for Judith
(173, 188). Because Rose expresses pleasure at the pendant
which he mistakenly starts to give to her, Boyne assumes she
is then disappointed with her gift. Yet Rose says the ring
is "‘much too beautiful'" and admires it, albeit
"diligently," from Boyne's perspective. Martin goes on to
contrast this imaginary crisis with how Judith would
supposedly behave in the same situation:

Judith Wheater, if he had been trying an

engagement ring on her finger (preposterous

fancy!) would have blurted out at once that she

preferred the trinket he had shoved back into his

pocket. But such tactlessness was unthinkable in

Mrs. Sellars. Not for the world, he knew, would

she have let him guess that she had given the

other ornament a thought. (173)

When Rose doesn't say anything to offend Martin, he can
still find fault with her by assuming she is exercising that
tact which he now finds so distasteful. Boyne's thought is
telling; the pendant is a substitute for the ring he would
rather give Judith, and the thought touches on his desire to
possess Judith, as his ring now possesses Rose's finger.
Just as Zinnia LaCross stakes her claim on Zinnie with a
gift, Boyne reveals his desire to possess Judy by giving

her, rather than his fiance, the expensive jewelry.

 

 

158

Wharton's irony is enriched by the fact that the pendant, an
antique, is more like Rose, while the new and common ring
exemplifies Judith's world--the world of hotel living in
which, as Rose had said, beauty is becoming "‘standardized'"
(105).

Boyne's assumption about how Judith would react in the
same situation is based on her previously having admitted
her disappointment that Blanca had "wangled" her present out
of Zinnia (75). And after the incident at Rose's, Boyne had
decided that Judith "must again be left out" when he showers
gifts on the other children. But when they take a walk "in
the mountain dusk" and "She hung on his arm, pressed close
by the intruding fir branches, he needed more and more to
think of her as a child, and, thinking thus, to treat her as
one." So he gives Judith the pendant. Doing so hardly
accomplishes Boyne's purpose, however, for the grateful
Judith wants to kiss him. Unnerved by the suggestion, Boyne
literally turns and runs (188).

Knowing that Judith is bound to wear her gift in front
of Rose, Boyne justifies his complete lack of tact in the
entire matter with the reflection that the pendant "was
Judith's by right because, like her, it was odd and
exquisite and unaccountable" (188). Martin's description of
Judith here echoes his previous thoughts about Rose, a woman
who, out of the "mediocre" material of her New York life,
had made "something distinguished, personal, almost

exciting-—so that, in her little world, people were

159

accustomed to say ‘Rose Sellars' as a synonym for cleverness
and originality" (39). The hint of disparagement inherent
in the reference to her "little world" notwithstanding,
clearly Boyne once viewed Rose—-when she was unavailable-—
similarly to how he now sees Judith.

After giving Rose her ring, Martin imagines she is
"brooding over her newly imprisoned finger" (176). But he
is projecting his perspective onto Rose. He, as the
narrative increasingly shows, is the one who feels
imprisoned. Boyne has been very aggressive with Rose
regarding their wedding date, ostensibly because, having
waited so long to possess her, he does not want to wait any
longer. But like Newland Archer, Boyne is trying to seal
his fate, in order to avoid dealing with his attraction to
Judith. Even as he argues with Rose about their wedding
date, Boyne notes that "During their first fortnight not a
cloud had shadowed their comradeship; but now that love and
marriage had intervened the cloud was there..." (96).

Since Boyne flatters himself that Rose's life had been
"hopeless," "vacant," and a series of "cold empty years"
without him, he cannot understand why she does not
immediately comply (91, 85). But Rose's reluctance to rush
into a new marriage is understandable, given that she has
been widowed only seven months, after a long, unhappy
marriage (93). Pushed to give a "better" reason for
hesitating, Rose says she does not want to offend her Aunt

Julia (who has made Rose her heir)——only to have Boyne

160

denigrate the idea of caring what anyone else thinks about
the timing of their marriage: "trimming his course to suit
the whims of rich relations had never been his way--perhaps
because he had never had any rich relations. Anyhow, he was
not going to be dictated to by his wife's; and it gave him a
feeling of manliness to tell her so" (95). Wharton's humor
at Boyne's expense elucidates his self-centeredness. And in
fact, Boyne's attitude is hypocritical, for while he
disparages Rose's sensitivity to others' wishes, he does not
hesitate to put the children first.

Also like Newland Archer, Boyne is appalled when Rose
finally does agree to hasten their wedding, ostensibly
because "everything that happens between us always seems to
happen at the wrong time" (231). Rose, however, realizes
the truth. "‘You're pledged because you want to be,'" she
says when Boyne tells her he can't leave the children.
"‘You're in love with Judith Wheater, and you're trying to
persuade yourself that you're still in love with me'" (233—
34). Indeed, Rose had had the same realization earlier but
had tried to dismiss it, until Boyne's behavior finally
forces her to address what, as she says, "‘I believe I've
always known'" (220). Noting Rose's distress, the horrified
Boyne reflects:

He had often mocked at himself as a man who...had

never had a real adventure; but now he saw that he

himself...had been Rose Sellars's Great Adventure,

the risk and the enchantment of her life. While

she had continued, during the weary years of her

marriage, to be blameless, exemplary, patient and

heroically gay, the thought of Boyne was storing
up treasures for her which she would one day put

 

 

 

 

161

out her hand and take....She had trained herself

to go on waiting for happiness...like a tireless

animal waiting for its prey. One day her prey,

her happiness, would appear, and she would snap it

up; and on that day there would be no escape from

her... (235, Wharton's final ellipsis).
While Boyne had preyed on the married Rose Sellars (to no
avail), he now perceives of himself as he; prey. His
seemingly perverse reaction to Rose's agreeing to marry him
can be understood in psychological terms. Discussing
relationships between adult men and women in The
Reproduction of Mothering (1978), Nancy Chodorow explains,
"Men both look for and fear exclusivity"; they tend to both
"want and fear" the intensity of heterosexual intimacy
(199). This tension stems, according to Chodorow, from a
man's desire to recreate the "primary intimacy and merging"
of his early relationship with his mother, a desire that is
countered by a "fear of fusion." Coinciding with this
tension, "fear of loss of a love object may make the
experience of love too risky" (79). Thus Martin fears both
being "snapped up" and consumed by Rose, now that she is
available, and risking himself in a love relationship with
this woman who, he discovers, seldom responds to his
thoughts in the same harmony as his imagined Rose (237).
His reaction to this fear is to question his feelings for
Rose; he tells himself that "The thought of her deep
submissive passion" concerns him because "He knew now how
much she loved him——but did he know how much he loved her?"
(238)

Corresponding with Boyne's perception of Rose as a

 

 

162

predator, her chalet comes increasingly to mean entrapment

to him. Sitting by Rose's fire early in the novel, Boyne

had looked forward to "an eternity of such evenings, in just
such a hushed lamplit room, with...that quiet silvery-auburn
head...bending over a book across the hearth" (86). Later,
returning from one of his forays into the Wheaters' Venice,
Martin enters the chalet and contentedly feels "the spell of
the place weave its noiseless net about him" (170). Yet
both of these images, though ostensibly positive, reflect
Boyne's unconsciously ominous view of his relationship with
Rose. Both the references to "eternity" and to a "net"
enclosing him convey Boyne's sense of being trapped, forever
unable to escape, which he only later articulates.

While Rose-~who the narrative closely identifies with
her small chalet-—represents enclosed space to Boyne, South
America represents the frontier on which Boyne, an engineer,
can literally make his mark. He longs to return to "the
glorious soul-releasing world of girders and abutments, of
working stresses, curvatures and grades" (240). His
profession enables Boyne to easily flee what he perceives as
the restricting snare of a relationship with a woman,
through a means unavailable to Wharton's previous male
characters.’ His desire to flee is strengthened when he

discovers the cradle in his room.

 

7See Chapter 3, "Ironic Structure and Untold Stories in
The Aqe of Innocence," for Nina Baym's discussion of the
myth of the American hero, which places women in league with
society, an "unmitigatedly destructive" force against
individuality (Baym 131-33).

163

The cradle, which is the children's wedding present to
Martin and Rose, upsets Boyne not so much because it
represents sexuality, but because it is a concrete symbol of
true commitment. Boyne can, and ultimately does, leave "the
children" whenever he likes. But the cradle represents a
"pledge" not so easily broken: marriage, with all its
attendant ties (regardless of whether or not Martin and Rose
were actually to have a child). Boyne discovers the cradle
in his room after taking a long "tramp" to think about his
relationship with Rose, and asking himself of the jealousy
which presumably motivates her, "was that loving him at
all?” (252) As he had continued his walk, Martin's thoughts
had turned from Rose to a memory of "that other night...when
he had climbed the same path, and his feet had seemd
winged...because a young girl's shoulder brushed his own,
and he listened to unpremeditated laughter" (253-54). So
appalled is Martin at the children's choice of a gift that
he "stared at [the cradle] incredulously, as if he knew it
must be an hallucination," and then breaks into hysterical
laughter (255-56). And as if to deny its meaning, Boyne
uses the cradle to keep his boots in, a purpose for which he
finds it "uncommonly handy" (267).

But the narrative suggests that the claustrophobic
Boyne overestimates Rose's need for him. After all, it was
he who initially rushed their wedding. And when Boyne's
subsequent reluctance to marry becomes clear, Rose quietly

withdraws. After confronting Martin with her realization

 

 

164

that he is in love with Judith, Rose suggests they "‘say
good-bye till tomorrow'" and "‘produce our respective
plans'" regarding the children at that time. Martin tries
to embrace Rose, but she "slipped out of reach, and softly,
adroitly closed the door on him." He feels "that that deft
gesture had shut him up with her forever" (235-36). His
perception is ironic for two reasons. First, the idea that
Rose captures him by refusing to embrace him reflects
Boyne's tendency to feel most tied to Rose when she is
unavailable to him; it is when they ge embrace that he
cannot regain the desire he felt for Rose when, alone in the
jungle, he first learned that her husband was dead (221).
Secondly, this is the last time Boyne sees Rose for several
weeks; she leaves for Paris the next day without telling
him. And when he writes a letter that angrily rejects her
proposal to adopt Terry and Blanca, Rose returns her
engagement ring without comment (259-61). Nor does she make
any recriminations against him when they finally meet again.
She welcomes him graciously, reassuring him that "‘You're
free, you know. We're just two old friends talking'" (318).
At this time--now that the threat inherent in their
engagement is over--Martin recognizes Rose's independence.
Meeting her in her rooms in Paris, "He felt only her mastery
of life and of herself, and thought how much less she needed
him than did the dishevelled child he had just left" (318).
Boyne, who had perceived Rose as a ghost, now feels "‘like a

ghost'" in Rose's presence (319). The sight of her graying

165

hair makes him feel "like a stranger coming back to her"
(318). In fact, his noting her aging confirms that Boyne is
no longer in love with Rose; before he was first reunited
with her, he had thought, "When a man loved a woman she was
always the age he wanted her to be; when he had ceased to,
she was either too old for witchery or too young for
technique" (40). In Paris, he looks wistfully around Rose's
sitting room, at the "pleasant firelit room," with her
"work-basket in its Béflél place" and a "familiar litter of
papers on a desk" (319, my emphasis). Rose represents
comfort and familiarity but, having rejected those things
from her, Boyne cannot find his way back to her now.

He registers the way in which, "under the graying
temples, her face looked changed and aged, like her hair"
(318). Clearly, despite Rose's "undaunted smile" and
gracious behavior, these signs of aging reflect the toll
Boyne's actions have taken on her. He seems to have
realized as much in an earlier scene, when in response to
his implying that Dobree is interested in Judith, "He saw
the faint lines of perplexity weaving their net over her
face, and reflected that when a woman is no longer young she
can preserve her air of freshness only in the intervals of
feeling," and felt "vexed with himself for upsetting the
delicate balance of her serenity" (216). But Boyne's
perception in that earlier scene implied that Rose is weak,
an implication Wharton extends when Boyne sees Rose as

reduced to "glittering fragments" when her trust in him is

166

first broken (220).9 Only once his obsession with Judith

has caused an irrevocable split between them can Boyne note

Rose's true strength.

Before this moment of recognition, Martin had turned to
Judith both because he finds Judith's ;ee; need less
threatening than the need he perceived Rose to have for him,
and because rejecting the adult Rose, with her individuality
and inconvenient scruples, had freed Boyne to enjoy the
Pygmalion myth that he could form the relatively undeveloped
Judith to please himself.9 Boyne's desire to do so is
demonstrated at two key points in the novel. The first is
in the cathedral at Monreale. Finding that "she could see
nothing" of the cathedral because of her "complete ignorance
of the past" and of art, Boyne is disappointed, "for he was
already busy at the masculine task of endowing the woman of
the moment with every quality which made life interesting to
himself" (35). Later, Boyne sees an opportunity to help
Judith rectify her ignorance. He encourages her to take
advantage of her parents' "educational mood," when they've

agreed to hire a tutor for Terry, "to get herself sent to a

 

”The situation is strongly reminiscent of the scene in
The Reef in which Anna Leath notes the effects of her
anguish on her appearance and, fearing she will not be able
to keep George as she ages, thinks, "‘he doesn't feel
things; and because he doesn't, I shall...'" (318).

9Discussing the tendency of Wharton's male characters
to "perceive woman not as she is but as he would have her,"
Ammons says, "Indeed, what is the Pygmalion impulse, so
ubiquitous in Wharton's novels, but the wish to project a
preconceived, or mythicized, image of woman onto a real
human being?" (Argument 176-77)

 

167

good school" (59-60). But Judith points out that she will
have no opportunity for schooling because she's sworn to
keep the children together, and "‘There'll always be some of
the children left to look after.'" Boyne responds, "‘But
now that all the children are safely with your own people'"
-—they're in Venice with the Wheaters--"‘couldn't you let
the oath take care of itself, and think a little of what's
best for you?'" (60) Boyne's question reveals his true
priority: Judith herself, not the children as a group.

Judith's response indicates both her better
understanding of her situation and her sense of
responsibility; while Martin sees life in terms of what he
wants, Judith focuses on her commitment to others. Judith,
aware of what she faces, resents any suggestion that she is
merely precocious. When Boyne chastises her for hinting at
her mother's interest in Gerald Ormerod, something "‘silly'"
for a girl "‘your age'" to say, Judith retorts, "‘What do
you know about my age? I'm as old as your grandmother. I'm
as old as the hills'" (61). Indeed, in terms of her
experience of life, Judith is as far beyond Boyne's
influence as is Rose.

The second key point at which Wharton portrays Martin's
desire to form Judith is the scene in which he and the
children play "Ambition" with the Princess Buondelmonte.
When Judith writes that she would like to be "An exploarer,"
"something darted through Boyne like a whirr of wings“

(296). Judith's ambition thrills Boyne because it seems to

168

suggest she is a kindred spirit. Judith could be someone to
see the world with him, someone to follow him wherever his
work takes him. Judith's ambition suggests a desire to be
free of the children some day, after all. But by reminding
the reader of Judith's lack of education with her spelling
of "exploarer," Wharton suggests that, like an education,
exloring anything that would take her away from the children
is just a fantasy for Judith.

And Boyne's implied comparison with Rose is unfair;
Boyne gives more credence to the dreams of a young girl
playing a game than he does to the adaptability of his
fiance. So far as the reader can tell, Boyne has never
asked Rose if she would travel with him, though both her
active enjoyment of the outdoors and her preference for a
quiet chalet away from the tourists' hotel suggest that Rose
would be pleased with such a life (82-83). Before the game
of Ambition, Boyne had thought, "Perhaps he could make Mrs.
Sellars understand that...she must let him go off on these
remote exciting expeditions which seemed the only cure
for...the creeping grayness of age..." But he never asks
Rose if she would allow him to travel, much less invites her
to join him. He can imagine nothing beyond getting her
"established" in New York, and "then--flight!" (240-41)

That Boyne's motives for helping Judith are largely self—
serving is further confirmed by his earlier reflection that
"it was pleasant, for once, to play the god,“ when he

realizes how easily he can assure Judith that everything

 

 

 

 

 

169

will be all right (187).

Although Boyne appears to find Judith more vibrant and
real than Rose, he actually has trouble seeing Judith as
real, too. "Whatever she was," Boyne thinks when he first
sees her, "she was only intermittently, as if her body were
the mere vehicle of her moods....As for her very self, when
she's not with [the other children], you grope for her
identity and find an instrument the wind plays on, a
looking—glass that reflects the clouds, a queer little
sensitive plate..." (36-37). Boyne makes numerous
assumptions about Judith, despite his difficulty in
"situating" her. But in reality, he knows very little about
her. Martin's frequent glimpses of Judith's childlikeness
only reinforce his romanticised view of her; she is
enchanting because she remains largely child-like despite
having the responsibilities of age. His first glimpse of
Judith places her as a Madonna figure: "His attention had
been drawn to a young woman--a slip of a girl, rather--with
a round flushed baby on her shoulder, a baby much too heavy
for her slender frame, but on whose sleepy countenance her
own was bent with a gaze of solicitude which rung a murmur
of admiration from Boyne" (3).‘° Seeing Judith first in
this pose with Chip, Boyne immediately views her as maternal
and therefore sexual by implication, just as Rose is sexual

by implication of the "disturbing" word widow. Yet his

 

1°In "Wharton Questions Motherhood," Keiko Beppu says
this scene "presents motherhood in caricature," as it places
Judith, "‘a slip of a girl'" as "an exemplary mother" (163).

170

making this assumption about Judith, rather than initially
assuming she is a sister or a governess (or simply not

trying to categorize her at all), indicates Boyne's
predisposition to be attracted to Judith as a woman, rather
than as a child. His indignant remarks about the "damned
cad" who could have married such a young girl mask his
immediate response: "‘Jove--if a fellow was younger!‘" (3—
4)

Throughout the novel, Judith remains oblivious to
Boyne's vacilations between viewing her as a child and as an
adult. She sees him strictly as a paternal figure, and
assumes he views her as a child. She is thrilled for Boyne
when he announces his engagement to Rose, though he expects
her to be devastated (193). And she develops an elaborate
plan for her and the other children to live in New York as
tenants of Boyne and Rose because, she says, “‘As long as
you're with us I always feel safe'" (266).

But Judith's and Martin's different priorities are
evident when he, now "freed" by Rose, tries to propose to
her." Having concluded that the children cannot be kept
together and anticipating Judith's "heartbreak of
separation" from them, Boyne thinks he can "ease" that pain
by marrying Judith. That Boyne's proposal excludes their
keeping the children together is evidenced by his failure to

answer her when he says "‘Perhaps after all there's a way,'"

 

11Wharton had originally intended for Judith and Boyne
to marry, and for Boyne to take in the rest of the children,
as well (Wolff 381).

171

and Judith asks, "‘a way of keeping us all together?'" (307—
308) Upset by his silence, Judith says: "‘Martin! You're
not going to desert us too?'" He responds:

"Darling, I'll never desert you; I'll stay with

you always if you'll have me; if things go wrong

I'll always be there to look after you and defend

you; no matter what happens, we'll never be

separated any more...." (308)

But while Boyne is using "you" in the singular tense, her
own perspective leads Judith to assume he is including all
of the children and that he means to adopt them all.

That Boyne is not including the others is further
confirmed by his next attempt at proposing marriage to
Judith. Finding that she is understandably perplexed when
he fails to clarify his meaning, Boyne decides to try again.
"‘If we can't prevent the children being taken away from
you, you'll be awfully lonely,'" he says. "‘If things went
wrong, and you were very lonely, and a fellow asked you to
marry him--'" "‘Who asked me?'" she says. "He laughed
again. ‘If I did.'" Judith "joined him in his laugh" at
what she considers a joke, but remains "disconsolate" at
what must seem to her as Boyne's making light of her coming
separation from the children (313-14).

Discussing this miscommunication between Martin and
Judith, in "Edith Wharton Reads the Bachelor Type," Judith
Sensibar notes that Boyne "phrases his proposal in the same
vocabulary he and Judith have used throughout to describe

Martin's role as good surrogate father, the grown—up who

will not desert the Wheater children," so it is no wonder

77 if," 7 7 f ————————_m--_. .m.m~_ -mw

172

Judith misconstrues his meaning. And as for Boyne's second
proposal, "Because he is the parent, she the child, she
looks to him for cues....Therefore when he laughs, she joins
in" (584).

Having been made to feel that he is not, after all,
"only as old as he feels" (307) by Judith's inability to
take his proposal seriously, Boyne becomes obsessed with

her.12

He was caught body and soul...and real loving was

not the delicate distraction...he had imagined it

when he thought himself in love with Rose Sellars;

it was this perpetual obsession, this clinging

nearness, this breaking on the rack of every bone,

and tearing apart of every fibre. (323)

Boyne can allow himself to experience these strong feelings
for Judith only now that the momentary "madness" of opening
himself to commitment to her is safely over (307).
Conversely, his feeling for Rose--with whom he may still be
able to salvage at least a friendship-—is now limited to
"pity" (323).

Martin's ego suffers an additional blow when he
discovers that, just as he had overestimated Rose's need for
him, he has overestimated his importance to Judith even as a
father—figure. Judith genuinely needs help, but she readily

transfers her confidence to Mr. Dobree as soon as it becomes

practical to do so. Although Martin is dismayed by this

 

12As Sensibar says, "As long as he can continue to
insist that Judith is a child and also continue to desire
her, he succeeds in replicating the comfortable situation he
had with Rose Sellars before her husband's death" (583).

 

173

turn of events, he should hardly be surprised, given how
easily the children had latched onto him as a possible
savior. In her desire to keep the children together, Judith
has essentially looked for any port in the storm of her
parents' squabbles. And since Boyne had established himself
as having some influence with the Wheaters by convincing
them to hire a tutor for Terry, Judith had thought he could
help. That is why she brought the children to Cortina when
the Wheaters started fighting again, and asked him to
"‘promise and swear to see us through'" (109-10). Later,
when she learns that Dobree now has her mother's attention,
Judith turns to him; "‘he can make mother do whatever he
tells her,'" she explains to Boyne (330).

Disillusioned at finding himself so easily replaced,
Boyne promises Judith and the other children a visit to
Versailles, and then flees to South America (332). He had
"sat watching her with insatiable eyes" while she chattered
on about Dobree, and had concluded that his relationship
with Judith had been "A moment only." Boyne leaves without
saying good-bye to her, because he prefers "The busy man's
way of liquidating hopeless situations" (333). But his
work--which now, ironically, he perceives as a "stiff
harness"--does not make Boyne forget Judith, as the novel's
denouement shows.

In the final chapter, Wharton adds an unexpected coda
to Boyne's preference for Judith. Boyne discovers Zinnie at

his hotel in Bordeaux, where he is taking a brief respite

174

before returning to work in Brazil. Zinnie tells him that
Chip is dead. Although the narrative presents this fact
with little comment, Wharton's meaning is clear; the promise
of youth is not always fulfilled. Cliffe Wheater's
preferring Chip to Terry, which had seemed to be just
another instance of his parental shortcomings, parallels
Boyne's preference for Judith over Rose; in both cases, the
men had preferred the unrealized potential of youth to the
reality of the more independent older person.'9 The
parallel is strengthened by Rose's affection for the
intellectual Terry (134-35).

Boyne's not speaking with Judith at the end, preferring
to speculate on the person she may now be, reflects his
desire to continue viewing her in terms of her potential.
Instead, he watches Judith "from without," through a window.
The image recalls Boyne's early impression of Judith as a
"looking glass", and by viewing Judith only through a pane
of glass, Boyne can continue to remember her in terms of how
she had "reflected" him. But such a stance toward another
human being is fragile. Boyne can only guard his image of
Judith from shattering into "fragments," as did his
relationship with Rose, by avoiding contact with her. He
had mistakenly hoped that the real Rose could live up to the

standard of mental harmony he had achieved with his

 

1aAmmons similarly notes, "Rose, the woman Boyne
rejects, represents Judith Wheater grown-up....Boyne does
not choose between two women but between two stages of
development in woman, as he perceives her: the child and the
grown-up" (Argument 175).

175

imaginary version of her. Rather than risking a similar
mistake with Judith, Martin, like Newland Archer at the end
of The Aqe of Innocence, never even enters the building. 80
while he voyeuristically registers every detail of her
appearance with "a passionate attentiveness," he need never
know whether "she was in love with the young man" she is
with at the dance or "was still a child, pleased at her new
dress, and half proud, half frightened in the waking
consciousness of her beauty, and the power it exercised"
(347). The very terms in which he thus speculates about her
allow Boyne to go away with his image of Judith as both

woman and child intact.

 

Conclusion

Summer and other Seasons

In writing each of the novels I have discussed, Wharton
drew on her own experience in having had an affair with
Morton Fullerton, the journalist with whom she was involved
from about 1908 to 1910. The affair, as several critics
have noted, was marked by Wharton's exuberant but troubled
love for this man who, as she once complained, would
sometimes “‘write to me like a lover, [and] treat me like a
casual acquaintance!‘" (Colquitt 91)1 As Wharton eventually
discovered, she was one in a long string of lovers for
Fullerton. Her women characters frequently experience their
sexual awakenings as mixed blessings, as did Wharton
herself; for characters from Charity Royall through Kate
Clephane, Wharton shows sexual initiation to be an intense,
invigorating experience, but one with a variety of negative
repercussions.

In an undated letter to Fullerton, Wharton says she is

afraid that "‘the treasures I long to unpack for you...are

 

1In addition to Colquitt, see R.W.B. Lewis' and Nancy
Lewis' "Introduction" to Wharton's Letters, 11-17; Wolff
192-98; and McDowell 24-26 for discussions of Wharton's
affair with Fullerton. McDowell notes, "Like many female
characters in her novels and stories, [Wharton] never found
in one man the love that included physical, mental, and
esthetic elements" (25).

176

 

 

177

only, to you, the old familiar red calico & beads of the

clever trader, who has had dealings in every latitude,'" and

that he will smile at these "treasures.” Wharton continues:
"Well! And if you do? It's your loss, after

all! And if you can't come into the room without

my feeling all over me a ripple of flame, & if,

wherever you touch me, a heart beats under your

touch, & if, when you hold me, & I don't speak,

it's because all the words in me seem to have

become throbbing pulses, & all my thoughts are a

great golden blur--why should I be afraid of your

smiling at me, when I can turn the beads & calico

back into such beauty--?" (Colquitt, 85)

Wharton's portrayals of sexual passion throughout her
fiction clearly draw on this description. Her own feeling
for Morton Fullerton is echoed in ”the long flame“ of
passion consuming Charity Royall in Summer; in Anna Leath's
vibrant awareness of George Darrow's presence in The Reef;
and in Kate Clephane's juxtaposing herself onto the young
lovers in The Mother's Recompense and feeling that she
"burned with the heat of [Chris'] palm" as he touches Anne
(221).

At the same time, Wharton's letter conveys her sense
that her lover--with his "‘dealings in every latitude'"--has
had experiences far beyond her realm, and that she is an
outsider to his world. Yet apparently even before becoming
Fullerton's lover, Wharton had affirmed the value of her
feeling for him, despite the pain she anticipated.

"1 want you to know once for all what [my] feeling

is--how grave & deep & tender--& how it has so

illuminated my life & kindled my heart, that even

now, with the certainty ahead of profound pain & a
long, long abnegation, I give thanks, I rejoice, I

178

exult in it...." (Colquitt 84)2

Many of the concerns that permeate the novels I discuss
are encapsulated in the short novel Wharton wrote during the
First World War. Wharton's 1917 Summer shows the high price
Charity Royall pays both for her sexual initiation and for
her ignorance of her lover's story. Her sexual "freedom" is
ultimately shown to have been far from liberating; pregnant
and abandoned by her lover, Lucious Harney, Charity marries
her guardian and remains in the village from which she had
longed to escape. Summer illustrates the way in which
Wharton uses untold stories as a narrative strategy to
explore issues of sexual freedom and the sexual double
standard. Charity's ignorance of her lover's life when he
is away from her remote village has disastrous consequences.
Wharton makes the importance of Lucious' untold story
apparent in the scene in which the pregnant Charity sees him
with Annabel Balch--to whom, it turns out, he is engaged-—
and Charity realizes: "Behind the frail screen of her
lover's caresses was the whole inscrutable mystery of his
life..." Charity is filled with ”a terror of the unknown,
of all the mysterious attractions that must even now be
dragging him away from her, and of her own powerlessness to
contend with them" (198).

Wharton's women's stories tend to remain untold because

they are not "narratable" according to early twentieth-

 

2Colquitt believes this letter, dated March 31, was
written in 1908, and that "within days" of writing it,
Wharton became Fullerton's lover (84).

 

1 ___+ —————n—_——-——_- .. Mn- _._. ‘ ,_H ..- -_.. ,héh .... _ __,. u.- -‘.---

179

century social conventions; Wharton ultimately removed Ellen
Olenska from the ostensible narrative center of The Age of
Innocence. and she has Kate's and Chris' affair occur
outside the narrative present of The Mother's Recompense.

In contrast, Wharton tends to leave the stories of men's
sexual liaisons untold both because these stories are
predictable to the reader and because, by showing her women
characters' ignorance of such stories, Wharton underscores
that these women are outsiders to the male world. Until she
realizes that George Darrow has had an affair with Sophy
Viner, it never occurs to Anna Leath that her husband may
also have had affairs. Even the manipulative Undine Spragg
must learn from someone else that her husband Raymond's
frequent business trips are really a cover for his visits to
his mistress.

Throughout her fictions, Wharton also continues to
write variations on the incestuous element inherent in
Charity Royall's marrying the man who has raised her.
Wharton's interest in the incest motif was doubtless piqued
by her knowledge of Katherine Fullerton. This young cousin
of Morton's, who his parents had adopted, grew up thinking
she was his sister. Once she learned that she was Morton's
cousin, Katherine "made known her feelings to him,” and they
became engaged--and remained engaged, throughout Fullerton's
affair with Wharton. The fact that Katherine was fourteen

years younger than Morton increased the seeming

180

incestuousness of their relationship.:3 Similarly, Wharton's
male characters' preferences for younger women (and Kate
Clephane's preference for a younger man) expand on the
incest motif Wharton explored in Summer. George Darrow has
an affair with a woman who then becomes engaged to George's
fiance's step-son. Martin Boyne longs to "possess" Judith
Wheater, despite his repeated attempts to remind himself
that she is a child, and despite the fact that she envisions
herself as a daughter to him and Rose.“

Finding themselves involved in relational triangles,
Wharton's characters tend to respond to each other as
rivals. Much of this rivalry occurs between parents and
children; Undine Spragg views her son as a rival for the
things she wants, while Kate Clephane comes to see her
daughter Anne as a sexual rival who is usurping her place as
Chris Fenno's lover. At the same time, Kate considers Chris
a rival for the affection of her daughter, with whom Kate
fancies she has "the one tie unmarred by dissimulation and
distrust" (69).

In The Children Wharton plays on the pattern of parent-
child rivalry by having Martin Boyne see his young charge,

Judith, as a rival with his fiance, Rose. He expects Judith

 

3This and other entanglements of Morton Fullerton's are
discussed in Colquitt 89—91. See also Wolff 198-202.

‘Elizabeth Ammons discusses the way in which the
relationship "between Judith and her would-be paternal
guardian Boyne, who would also like to be Judith's husband
and lover, reiterates the symbolic paradigm of patriarchal
incest first developed in Summer" (Argument 182).

 

181

to be devastated by the news that he is engaged to Rose, and
he is relieved that her knowing he's engaged "would do away
with no end of hedging and prevaricating." Martin even
admits to himself that "he was perhaps disappointed by
Judith's prompt congratulations" on his engagement (193-95).
Likewise, Martin sees the elderly Mr. Dobree looking at
Judith, assumes he is interested in her, and is then
incredulous to learn that Dobree has proposed to Rose. And
The Reef's rivalry (as Anna sees it) between Anna Leath and
Sophy Viner for the love of George Darrow is complicated by
the fact that Anna was about to become Sophy's mother-in-
law.a

Even aside from any incestuous ramifications, Wharton
shows that indulging one's passion can be costly. In The_
geeg, Anna Leath is so overcome by her passion for George
Darrow that she feels a "morbid terror" at letting him out
of her sight, even though she realizes she cannot marry him.
For The Aqe of Innocence's Ellen Olenska, even the hint of a
scandal makes it impossible to become "a complete American
again." Although Kate Clephane in The Mother's Reeehpehee_
feels that "Life still dated for her" from the day she met
Chris, that is ”in spite of his having inflicted on her the
bitterest pain she had ever suffered," and in spite of

Kate's having.felt that their affair had "stained" and

 

5Wharton's 1911 Ethan Frome_also draws on a symbolic
parent-child rivalry, as Ethan becomes interested in his wife
Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver, and imagines beginning
life anew with her. In Ethan Frome, however, Wharton
develops the women characters very little.

182

"defiled" her years of atonement for leaving her husband and
child (15).

While Wharton's women characters struggle with intense
sexual passion and with their attempts to make sense of
their lives, Wharton's male characters tend to view these
women as static and unchanging. This tendency is symbolized
by the way in which these men often imagine women as works
of art. George Darrow notes the "quality of reticence" in
Anna's beauty and compares her to "a fine portrait kept down
to a few tones, or a Greek vase on which the play of light
is the only pattern" (322$.122)- She is "like a picture so
hung that it can be seen only at a certain angle: an angle
known to no one but its possessor. the thought flattered
his sense of possessorship..." (125, Wharton's ellipsis).
These quotes further reveal that George views Anna solely in
terms of his relationship with her; he is the "light” which
can provide a "pattern" to her otherwise "closed and
curtained" existence, and he imagines that he alone can
really "see" or understand Anna. Ironically, as is the case
with Newland Archer's perception of May in The_hge_e;
Innocence, George understands very little about Anna.

Like George, Martin Boyne compares his feeling for
"Mrs. Sellars" to "something apart, like a beautiful picture
on the wall of a quiet room" and hopes that interacting with
the real Rose will not force him to modify this view of her
(Children 226). At the end of 1he_ghelg;eh, Martin

similarly records the details of Judith's appearance as

183

though she were a portrait or a tableau vivant, as the men
do of Lily Bart in the tableau vivant scene in The House of
h;;;h. In each of these cases, the men's perceptions are
contradicted by the ways in which the narrative presents the
woman in question. Anna is alive, albeit painfully so, with
questions about her relationship with George; Lily has far
more integrity than Lawrence Selden gives her credit for;
and Rose and Judith are both vibrant and, ultimately,
independent of Martin.

While these male characters tend to damn women as
unchangeable--usually because the women fail to bend to fit
ghgmrmthe men ultimately show the least ability to grow.
Ralph Marvell's inability to change his picture of Undine
and move beyond their relationship, in The Custom of the
Country, is ultimately fatal; Martin Boyne rejects the love
of the woman he had fantasized about for years, in favor of
a return to the frontier; and Newland Archer refuses to
acknowledge May's complexity, beyond realizing her role in
separating him and Ellen. Even The_gheheh_e;_;he_gehhh;y's
Elmer Moffatt remains vulgar and loud, despite the genuine
love of art he has cultivated.

These men also persistently fail to act at critical
moments. Distraught that Undine is divorcing him, and
complying with his family's desire to avoid publicity, Ralph

unthinkingly agrees to a settlement that gives Undine sole

 

 

 

 

 

184

custody of their son Paul.‘ Later, Ralph passively trusts
Elmer Moffatt with the details of the business transaction
‘which he hopes will enable him to buy Paul back. Newland
Archer refuses to see Ellen Olenska at the end of The Age of
Innocence. And, as Judith Saunders says of The Children,
Martin Boyne is a "perpetual voyeur" who "merely watches his
women, while claiming to seek ‘adventure' and to long for
love" (578).

Because these men are resistant to change, as they grow
older, they continually sabotage their chances to realize
the dreams of their youth. George has a ”fling” while
enroute to Anna; Newland prefers to maintain his vision of
Ellen rather than to see her; and Martin uses his "pledge"
to help the children as a way to avoid committing himself to
Rose. Like nineteenth-century romance heroines, Wharton's
heh may quest, but they seldom change.7 In The_he;he;;e_
Recom ense, Wharton reverses this tendency by creating a
woman character who assumes that others do not change, while
in fact ehe is static. Despite much narrative evidence to
the contrary, Kate Clephane assumes Chris Fenno has not
changed in the years since they were lovers. Conversely,

Fred Landers, unlike the typical male character in Wharton's

 

6Wolff also notes "Ralph's fundamental passivity";
"Even the most important transaction in Ralph's life is
contaminated by this deadly lassitude. The details of the
separation, where the interests of his son most intimately
concern him, slip unnoticed through his limp fingers" (Feast
of Words 238-39).

7See McNall's discussion of nineteenth-century romance
heroines and their inability to change (Intruder 9).

185

fiction, seizes his opportunity to realize his dream:
marriage to Kate. Fred is still willing to marry Kate, even
after she tells him about her affair with Chris, and he
continues to pursue Kate even after she flees to the
Riviera.

One trait that nearly all Wharton characters share,
regardless of gender, is their failure to articulate
themselves clearly to one another. Just as Lily Bart and
Lawrence Selden fail to find ”the word which made all clear"
in The House of Mirth (342), so many other Wharton
characters suffer for their inarticulateness. Wharton
contrasts Anna Leath's inability to speak about her feelings
to George, in The Reef, with George's deliberate use of
language as a diplomatic tool. In The Children, Martin
Boyne's ambivalence about his engagement to Rose Sellars is
symbolized by his inability to articulate his feelings about
her to Judith. "‘Mrs. Sellars is the most perfect, the most
exquisite...‘ He broke off, feeling that such asseverations
led nowhere in particular..." He tries again, telling
Judith, "‘Being with somebody like her is so exactly
what...'" But, as the narrator says, "This, again, seemed
to land him in a sort of rhetorical blind alley" (194).
Similarly, Boyne's failure to make his meaning clear when he
proposes marriage to Judith prevents her from understanding,

much less accepting, that proposal--although Wharton had

.—7.v.1.._...—._.._ 7.. ..__._~-.-‘., 7. -.-i— ,, “.7 1 7-, rm. ,_.___

186

originally intended for Martin and Judith to marry.9

When in The Mother's Recompense the Reverend Arklow
counsels Kate Clephane that she can avoid telling Anne about
her affair with Chris, if she "could be sure of never
betraying herself in the future," Kate wonders, "where
should she find the courage to conform" to this advice
(215). In fact, Kate has neither the courage to speak nor
to keep silent; she cannot force herself to reveal her
secret to Anne, and, since she cannot bear the thought of
remaining forever silent, she tries to rely on Chris to
solve her problem by leaving Anne. Her efforts to make
Chris leave also epitomize Kate's inability to speak. When
Chris informs her that his pledge to stay away from Anne is
broken because Kate has "insinuated" things about him, Kate
recalls an earlier time when she felt "the same sense of her
inability to move him, even to reach him" (175-76).

Perhaps the most compelling example of inarticulateness
in Wharton's fiction is the long passage in Ihe_hge_e;
Innocence in which the narrator explicates Newland's and

May's few words regarding a "business" trip Newland has

 

aWolff discusses Wharton's outline of The Children, in
which Boyne marries Judith and takes in the rest of the
children. As the outline says, "‘He sees the folly of the
marriage, and yet is so frightened by her loneli-
ness...that...Boyne marries [Judith]--but as if he was
taking a little sister home'" (Eeest of gorge 381). The
plan is very similar to Summer in this respect. Wolff notes
that this ending "makes concessions...to the older
generation's fantasy of rejuvenation through a sexual union
with youth" and speculates that the death of Wharton's close
friend Walter Berry in October 1927 caused her to change the
ending to the final ”one of renunciation and bleak
resignation" (382).

   

 

187

planned. "‘I may have to go to Washington for a few days'"
he tells May. She responds, "‘The change will do you
good....and you must be sure to go and see Ellen.'" The
narrator comments, "It was the only word that passed between
them on the subject; but in the code in which they had both
been trained, it meant..." A long paragraph, presumably of
May's thoughts, follows, concluding with:

"I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in

Washington, and are perhaps going there expressly

for that purpose; and that, since you are sure to

see her, I wish you to do so with my full and

explicit approval—~and to take the opportunity of

letting her know what the course of conduct you

have encouraged her in is likely to lead to."

(266)

Wharton shows that such "mute messagelsl" are the nearest
recourse to communication in what their son Dallas later
calls the "deaf-and—dumb asylum" of Newland's and May's life
together. Newland himself recognizes at the end of The Age
of Innocence that his has been an ”inarticulate lifetime"
(267, 356).

The pervasive failure of her characters to speak
clearly to one another at critical moments complements
Wharton's use of untold stories throughout her fiction.
Whatever Wharton may lead the reader to infer about the
stories of characters such as Ellen Olenska, Sophy Viner,
and Anne Clephane, Wharton's narratives illustrate the high

cost of her characters' failing to tell the ”stories" of

their lives and needs to one another-—or to themselves.

 

 

 

 

,________—-__ '1! - -

BI BLI OGRAPHY

 

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---—. Edith Whartonlg Argument with America.
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Goodwyn, Janet. Edith Wharton: Treyeller in theiLand of
Letters. London: Macmillan, 1990.

Howe, Irving. "Introduction: The Achievement of Edith
Wharton." EQith Wharton: a Collection of Critical
Essays. Ed. Irving Howe. Englewood Cliffs, N J:
Prentice-Hall, 1962. 1-18.

Jessup, Josephine Lurie. The Faith of Our Feminists: A
Study in the Novels of Edith WhartonI Ellen Glasgow,
and Willa Cather. 1950. New York: Biblo and Tannen,
1965.

Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.

Kowaleski-Wallace, Beth. "The Reader as Misogynist in The
Custom of the Country." Sess. titled "The Limited
Vision." Wharton Conference, 9 June 1987.

 

190

Lawson, Richard H. Edith Wharton. New York: Frederick
Ungar, 1977.

Lewis, R.W.B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper
& Row, 1975.

Lindberg, Gary H. Egith Wharton and theeNovel of Manners.
Charlottesville: U P of Virginia, 1975.

Maynard, Moira. "Moral Integrity in The Reef: Justice to

Anna Leath." College Literature Edith Wharton Issue
14.3 (1987): 285-95.

McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Boston: G.K. Hall,
1976.

McNall, Sally Allen. Whogie in the House? A Psychological
Study of Tgoigentgries of Women's Figtion in America,
1795 to the Present. New York: Elsevier, 1981.

Morrow, Nancy. "Games and Conflict in Edith Wharton's The
sttom of the Copntry." American Literery Realism 17
(1984): 32-39.

Nevius, Blake. Edith Wharton. Berkeley: U of California P,
1953.

OxfordpEnglieh Dictionary. New York: Oxford U P, 1989. 2nd
ed.

Price, Alan. "The Composition of Edith Wharton's The Age of

Innoeehce." ghe Yele University Library Gazette. 55
(1981): 22-30.

Raphael, Lev. "Shame in Edith Wharton's The Mother's
Recompense." American Imago. 45.2 (1988): 187-203.

Saunders, Judith. "The Dynamics of Futility: Repetitive
Action in Wharton's Plots." Sess. titled "Structural
Strategies." Wharton Conference.

Schriber, Mary Suzanne. "Convention in the Fiction of Edith
Wharton." Studies in American Figtion 11.2 (1983):
189- 201.

--—-. Gender and the Writer's Imagination: From Cooper to
Wharton. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 1987.

Sensibar, Judith L. "Edith Wharton Reads the Bachelor Type:
Her Critique of Modernism's Representative Man."
American Literature. 60.4 (December 1988): 575-90.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. "The World Outside." The Female
Imagination. Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. 227-75.

 

H

 

191

Stein, Allen F. After the Vows were Spoken: Marriage in
American Literary Realism. Columbus: Ohio State U P,
1984.

Tintner, Adeline. "Mothers, Daughters, and Incest in the
Late Novels of Edith Wharton." The Lost Tradition:
Mothers end Daughters in Literature. Ed. Davidson,
Cathy N., and E.M. Broner. New York: Ungar, 1980.
147—56.

Tuttleton, James W. "Mocking Fate: Romantic Idealism in
Edith Wharton's The Reef." Studies in the Novel 19.4
(1987): 459-74.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. The Housegeprirth: A Noveleof
Admonition. Boston: Twayne, 1990.

Walton, Geoffrey. Edith Wharton: A Critical Interpretation.
Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson U P, 1970.

Wershoven, Carol. The Fehale Int;pder in the Novels of
Edith Wharton. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson U P,
1982.

Wharton, Edith. The Aqe of Innocence. 1920. New York:
Scribner's, 1948.

———-. The Children. New York: Appleton, 1928.

----. The Cgstoh of the Country. 1913. New York:
Scribner's, 1941.

----. Ethan Frome. 1911. New York: MacMillan, 1986.

—--—. The Hogse of Mirth. 1905. New York: New American
Library, 1964.

----. The Eette;e of Edith Wharton. Ed. Lewis, R.W.B., and
Nancy Lewis. New York: Macmillan, 1988.

—---. The Mother's Recompenee. 1925. New York:
Scribner's, 1986.

—-—-. The Reef. 1912. New York: Scribner's, 1965. rep.
Macmillan, 1987.

----. Summer. 1917. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Williams, Merryn. "Edith Wharton." Six Women Novelists.
London: Macmillan, 1987. 20-41.

 

 

192

Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Behind the Lines: The Search for

the Absent Sign in The Mother's Recompense.“ Wharton
Panel. Women's Studies Conference, Michigan State
University. 12 April 1990

———-. A Feest of Wo;g§: The Triumph of Edith Wharton. New
York: Oxford U P, 1977.

Wolstenholme, Susan. "Edith Wharton's Gibson Girl: The

Virgin, the Undine, and the Dynamo." American Literary
Realism 18.1-2 (1984): 92-106.

Zilversmit, Annette. "‘All Souls': Wharton's Last Haunted
House and New Directions for Criticism." Closing
speech. Wharton Conference, 10 June 1987.

 

 

 

193

General References

Auchincloss, Louis. Edith Wharton. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1961.

Candido, Joseph. ”Edith Wharton's Final Alterations of The

Age of Innocence.” Studies in American Fiction 6: 1-
31.

Dessner, Lawrence Jay. "Edith Wharton and the Problem of
Form." Ball State University Forhh 24.3 (1983): 54-
63.

Donovan, Josephine. After phe Fall: The Demeter-Persephone

Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow. University Park:
Pennsylvania State U P, 1989.

Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. "Angel of Devastation:
Edith Wharton on the Arts of the Enslaved." No Men's
Land: The Pleee of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth
Century. Volume 2: Sexchenges New Haven: Yale U P,
1989. 123-68.

 

Kellogg, Grace. The Two Lives of Edith Wharton: The Woman
and Her Work. New York: Appleton-Century, 1965.

O'Neal, Michael J. "Point of View and Narrative Technique
in the Fiction of Edith Wharton.” Style 17.2 (1983):
270-89.

Singley, Carol J. ”The Depth of the Soul: Faith, Desire,
and Despair in Edith Wharton's Fiction.” Diss. Brown
U, 1986.

Vita-Finzi, Penelope. Edith Wharton and the Art pf Fietigh.
London: Pinter, 1990.

Wharton, Edith. A Backward Glance. New York: Scribner's,
1934. rep. 1985.

 

 

 

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