Edith Wharton Books

When Lewis Raycie, at age twenty-one, is sent abroad for two years to "form his taste [and] fortify his judgment," his father gives him five thousand dollars to purchase fine art on his father's behalf. His father's tastes are those of his upperclass friends, unformed by personal interest or study, and he especially hopes that Lewis will acquire a Raphael, since Raphaels are in vogue among his friends. In Italy, however, Lewis purchases Italian "primitives" by Giotto, Piero Della Francesca, Mantegna, and Carpaccio, paintings he loves and which he believes will form a stunning foundation for his father's gallery.

Though Lewis has, in fact, "formed his taste and fortified his judgment," exactly what he was expected to do in his tour of Europe, his father is outraged when he sees these paintings, all by artists he considers inferior--he has never heard of them and none of his friends collect them--and Lewis is disinherited. The novella follows Lewis and his wife Treeshy as they deal with the personal and social consequences of Lewis's art purchases.

The first of Wharton's four "Old New York" novellas, set in ten-year intervals between 1840 and 1870, False Dawn is as careful in its depiction of the New York society of the 1840s as Wharton's more famous novels are of their (later) periods. The artificiality of society, its reliance on stultifying social conventions, and the penchant for social competition are vividly illustrated here, and these themes combine with Wharton's vivid descriptions of places and people to give a liveliness to her depiction of this pre-Civil War era.

Lewis's ineffectual mother has inherited most of the family's resources, but she has turned them over to her husband, typical behavior of women of the era, and his sisters with their concern for their own reputations in the face of Lewis's ostracism show the degree to which social acceptance may be more important than family love. Only Lewis's wife Treeshy, who is both a social outcast and a homely, unfashionable woman, illustrates love and family values.

Though this is not as long as other Wharton novels, Wharton tells a compelling story, keeping her focus on Lewis and his family, rather than on the broader swath of society. In this sense this novel is more intimate and personal than some of Wharton's other novels. On the other hand, its narrower focus, however representative of the times, leads to a less expansive interpretation of familiar themes. As Wharton brings the resolution of the novella up to date by tracing the paintings to the present, the struggles of Lewis and Treeshy for social and intellectual independence achieve even greater poignancy. n Mary Whipple

This review is meant as a tribute to Edith Wharton's writing skill, because she can take a topic about which this reader has little knowledge and less interest and weave it into a page-turner. An inspiring story with a happy ending it is not, but The House of Mirth has many qualities to recommend it. Its heroine, Lily Bart, is not noble. She is snobbish and indecisive, qualities only somewhat mitigated by her intelligence, generosity and integrity (at least in comparison with the other characters caught up in the social whirl of New York's Fifth Avenue at the dawn of the Twentieth Century.)

Lily Bart is a beautiful, sought-after socialite who turns down more marriage proposals than Scarlett O'Hara accepts. Pushing 30, she is still hedging on commitment, possibly because her heart belongs to Lawrence Selden. Lily has made it clear to Lawrence that they can only be friends because she must marry a rich man, as both of her parents died and left her in a upper crust social milieu with no inheritance of her own. Lily lives with her aunt who is kind to her and pays most of her expenses except the debts Lily has incurred playing cards for money. The aunt's attitude might have been reasonable had Lily not incurred the debt fulfilling a social obligation to join her aunt's bridge parties. Thus Lily's life goes on, her obligations leave her damned if she does, damned if she doesn't, and she lacks the wherewithal to ignore social obligations and strike out on a path of her own. The issue of her debt drives the downward trajectory of Lily's social status, since Lily possesses neither the money sense nor the professional skill to manage her finances or shore up her dwindling bank balance.

In spite of the fact that The House of Mirth was published in 1905, the truths that Wharton illustrates with Lily's story feel strangely contemporary. Wharton pictures a new class of self-made millionaires created by Wall Street, casts a shadow over the tenuous position of those in the "leisure class" and offers a peek at the ascendancy of the self-supporting career woman. What a working woman can take away from this story is a gladness that she can marry or not; that she can keep her friends or not; that she can join the social whirl or thumb her nose at it because she possesses an independence that Lily Bart was denied.

I found this book to be unlike the other works I had read by Edith Wharton. While her books "The Age of Innocence," "The House of Mirth" and "The Children" focused on the intricacies of upper-class society, "Hudson River Bracketed" is more about the creative personality. Young Vance Weston comes to New York State from a small town in the midwest. Untutored, he has a strong desire to write, and he makes his way in the New York literary world. He forms a strong friendship with a wealthy and brilliant women, Halo Tarrant. This book occasionally felt a bit like a pot-boiler, but it did hold my attention, particularly due to the way that Vance was in many ways a difficult person, yet undeniably a talented writer. There is a sequel (which I have not read) called "The Gods Arrive"

In a way, Edith Wharton was at her best in her novellas -- her stories are lean, taut and emotionally deep.

And the rather elusive "Madame De Treymes and Three Novellas" brings together four of her not-so-well-known novellas, elongated short stories that explore love, morality, betrayal, the conventions on both sides of the Atlantic, and povert. They're not just fascinating, but beautifully written.

"The Touchstone" was Wharton's first novella that made it to print. Stephen Glennard needs money to marry his fiancee, but his job is in tatters. So he decides to sell the love letters left to him by his ex-girlfriend, a famous and newly deceased author -- to live happily ever after with one lover, Glennard will betray another.

"Madame De Treymes" is a sort of Henry Jamesian novella, taking place in early twentieth-century Paris. It follows the unhappy lives abroad of two Americans -- the miserable Fanny Frisbee is married to a nasty aristocrat, and living in Paris. As a knight on a white horse, her friend John is trying to convince her to divorce her hubby and marry him. Of course, it can't be THAT simple.

"The Bunner Sisters" is one of Wharton's darkest stories, in which two timid sisters run a small, failing shop together. When Ann Eliza gives Evalina a gifts, they both become involved with the mysterious man, Ramy, who sold it to her. Ann Eliza attempts to sacrifice money and happiness for her sister's happiness, but neither knows what Ramy is hiding from them, or how it will destroy their lives.

And in "Sanctuary," Kate Orme is horrified when she discovers a blinkered moral failing in her fiancee, which led to a woman's death. Determined to save his kids from a similar flaw, she marries him and is pretty quickly widowed. But years later, her brilliant, charming young son is given a tempting offer that may lead him to cheat his way through a contest.

Edith Wharton was all about unvarnished looks at society, whether it was the society of New York slums, the Manhattan wealthy, or a French aristocratic family. And while these novellas aren't her best, or most insightful, they pack a certain dramatic punch, no matter what happens to her characters.

She usually had a formal, often poetic writing style, rich with light, smells, sounds and the swirl of nature. Two of these stories qualify, but two are less so -- "Bunner Sisters" is painfully grimy and bleak, and "Sanctuary" has the feeling of a full-length novel that Wharton never got around to fully fleshing out.

But whatever the prose was like, it was overshadowed by the bones of her stories -- if she took a hard look at hypocrises and social conventions, she didn't flinch from showing what happened to those that transgressed. Some become wealthy, some fade into homeless poverty. It's realistic, but a bit depressing.

The main characters are not quite as realistic in some of these as in some of her works -- Kate Orme is a big bundle of whiny manic angst, and Evalina is just too limp. But most of them do come to life brilliantly -- the noble John, divided Glennard, poverty-stricken Ann Eliza, and likable Dick. A lot of them were unlike Wharton, which makes their lifelike qualities even more striking.

"Madame De Treymes and Three Novellas" is not quite Edith Wharton's best work, but this quartet of clever, lesser-known works is one that deserves a look.

I read this book at a time when a friendship I'd held near and dear ended irrationally and insensitively, my kids were growing into independent teens, but also a time when my 18-year marriage was coming into a state of profound comfort and happiness. However, I was also in the midst of finishing a college degree, working on writings I hoped to have published, and coping with the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. This book brought me down to earth, in a way, because I think we tend to look upon writers as a special breed of people with no personal difficulties, when quite the opposite is actually true. If nothing else, this book taught me that it could very well be my current travails that put me into print!

There is a deep sense of irony in a lot of Edith Wharton's work. It seems puzzling given her time and gender-this is not a voice typical of nineteenth century women. Along comes Gloria Erlich, an independent scholar with an
account of Wharton's childhood with an aloof mother followed by a celibate marriage (?! as they might say in chess-talk).
All of a sudden, Wharton's voice becomes easier to understand and her female characters a lot more accessible. Score one for independent scholars.


--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the sexually well-educated bang BANG: A Novel

"A Son at the Front," a novel by Edith Wharton, has been republished with an introduction by Shari Benstock. Benstock notes that the novel was serialized from 1922 to 1923 and that an edition was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1923. The novel tells the story of John Campton, an American portrait painter who lives in France. Campton's son George, because he was born in France, is subject to mobilization in the French army for World War I. As the story unfolds we see the war's impact on father and son, as well as on George's mother (from whom Campton is divorced) and her current husband, and on other individuals.

Wharton poignantly portrays the anguish and challenges faced by the families of soldiers during wartime. She shows how the horror and violence of war touches even those who are far from the front lines. Yes, I felt that the story briefly dragged at times and that some of the minor characters could have been better drawn, but the novel is overall interesting and at times profoundly moving. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that George is the child not of a happy, saccharine couple, but of a divorced couple who are forced to come together over their common concern in time of war. It is in the drama involving George's parents and stepfather where the book often has its most powerful edge.

This book offers an interesting look at the role of soldier's families, and also of the arts community, during wartime. Also significant is Wharton's look at the importance of personal letters as a communication medium during war. More than eighty years after its initial publication, and with the United States once more at war, "A Son at the Front" remains a relevant work of literature by one of America's most noteworthy novelists.

Written in 1917, Summer is Wharton's most explicitly sexual novel, tracing the awakening of Charity Royall to the sweetness of love and its power. Charity was born on "the mountain," a place of poverty and degradation, and given over to Lawyer Royall and his wife, residents of the town of North Dormer, to be brought up. When his wife dies, Lawyer Royall is hard pressed to deal with this child, choosing to ignore her most of the time, and bringing her up with little feeling of warmth of affection.

Anxious to have some independence so that she can escape, at some point, from the closed society of the village, Charity becomes the town librarian, a part-time job which gives her a small amount of her own money. There she encounters Lucius Harney, the nephew of one of the town's leading citizens, an architect studying some of the old houses in the area. His interest in Charity soon develops into affection and then passion, and the two become lovers, a relationship which quickly develops complications. Charity, with few options in life, is starved for affection and yearns to escape the village, while Harney, educated but personally weak, can already come and go as he pleases.

Wharton uses the seasons symbolically to illustrate the development of the relationship between Charity Royall and Lucius Harney from the earliest stirrings of their interest when they meet in early June to the full passion of their love in mid-August. Fall brings reality to Charity, and winter freezes her soul. Throughout the novel references are made to the mountain where Charity was born and to the ignorant people who live there without hope of improving their lives. Charity's own return to visit her family shows her the desperation of their lives, and her need to grasp whatever escape route is available to her.

Wharton's bold depiction of sexual themes makes this novel unusual for its period. She depicts a young woman who has a fierce desire for independence but who has few opportunities to escape her environment, a young woman who latches onto a relationship which broadens her world. She minces no words in showing scenes in which sexual abuse rears its ugly head, and she is realistic in the options she gives for "fallen" women like Charity to deal with the complications of their lives in the "fall" of the relationship. Though the beginning of the novel may seem sentimental or melodramatic, Wharton has a clear vision of the limited possibilities open to young women of the day, and her conclusion emphasizes this. Mary Whipple

The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
The Glimpses Of The Moon
The House of Mirth (Dover Thrift Editions)
False Dawn
The Buccaneers (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

Because I am adapting this novella for Warner Bros as a feature film, I'm interested in hearing what readers have to say about it. This is Wharton's first novella, written at a time when she was still developing her craft as a writer; the story can appear woefully underwritten. Still, the story is mesmerizing and dangerous, a Faustian tale of betrayal, greed and the consequences paid, and the more often I read through it, the more hidden meanings emerge. When you read it, think of the lover who sold Princess Diana's first secrets of their affair to the tabloids, and the consequences since. What ever happened to that man? Perhaps, like Stephen Glennard in "The Touchstone", he has gone mad from guilt, which, ironically enough, might prove he has a conscious after all.

I got to know: what idiot decided this terrible thing should become a classic? It's depressing, overdramatic, and just plain silly. I realize that many people were deeply moved by this novel, but why? It seems to defy the very purpose of writing a novel. Call me a romantic, but I believe that the greatest stories, even the tragedies, did something to edify the human spirit--there was some aspect of them that was uplifting! This monstrosity did not. In fact, all I can think to say of it now is that it was something that desperately wanted to be inspiring. So, like a stick-in-the-mud English teacher this story pulled out all the obligatory ingredients of nice prose, various themes, angsty characters. But without heart, those ingredients cooked into nothing.I will not apologize for hating this novel. It is the kind of novel that exists only to lose itself in its self-pride and congratulate itself.

I love Edith Wharton's work. I read it mostly for the mellifluous prose. This book, however, is dull in every sense. The prose are flat and spare. The story is flat and spare. And I hate it. It was boring. Usually her stories are engaging, interesting, and hard to put down. I knew when I bought this book it would be bad. I asked myself, "What the hell does Edith Wharton know about indigent peasants?" And after reading "Ethan Frome" I realized she knew nothing! Stick to the glittering affluent New York life that you knew and were a part of. I admire Edith Wharton's attempt to branch out and I'm sure she meant every word she wrote (since apparently her own marriage was falling apart), but the book is still boring. Read any other book by her, especially The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth.

Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is no doubt one of the bleakest tragedies in classic American literature. Everything from the sparse landscape to the unappealing personal circumstances within this depressing tale hint at a gloomy conclusion. When we first see Ethan Frome, the narrator describes him as a broken man, both physically and psychologically, even from a first glance. As the narrator learns more about Frome from townspeople and eventually Frome himself, this first impression proves to be quite accurate. After the unnamed narrator employs Frome to drive him to work, he slowly learns a few surprising tidbits about the obscure man.

One night, due to extenuating circumstances, Ethan takes the narrator into his home to stay the night. From there, the story switches to an omniscient point of view, detailing how Ethan became his current self. It is an age old tale: Man loves woman, man cannot have woman, Man and his love attempt to be together. Sadly, this love story has a tragic ending for everyone involved.

Despite Wharton's magnificently descriptive writing, the story tends to drag at particular points. The book may have been better suited as a short story as opposed to a novel. Overall, the story itself was thoughtful and well written, just not very captivating at times.

I hate this book more than any other I've read. Edith Wharton indulges herself in a meticulous catalog of imaginary human misery. It is, in it's way, the spiteful grandmother of all the modern fiction that rejoices in the pathetic dysfunction of annoying nobodies. Read it and you have wasted precious hours of your life that you could have spent seeking real joy.

"Life, is the saddest thing, next to death." Edith Wharton

This brief peek into the lightless lives of Ethan & Zeeny Frome and Mattie Silver left this reader thankful that the novella wasn't very long. After all, how much bleakness can one person take? While I was perusing this one, I kept thinking to myself `what a shame, if only these people could have been born nowadays...' For in the Frome's little world, the early 20th century world of rural New England, divorce was rarely on option. Instead it seemed to be a privilege almost solely reserved for the extremely wealthy and/or celebrities. Also, Ethan's sickly, hypochondriac wife Zeena is obviously suffering from depression, which of course back in those days was about as treatable as all those phantom illnesses Zeena incessantly griped about.

So our ill-fated protagonist with his altruistic, caring nature is trapped. He is trapped because he is poor. He is trapped in a loveless marriage with a gloomy, woeful wife who does nothing all day but whine. He is trapped in a star-crossed love affair, with both participants knowing full well their heading down a one-way sled-ride to perdition. Ergo, I now know why Edith would pen a quote like the one above? All you have to do is read this short, sorrowful story and you will plainly see for yourself.

The million dollar question obviously is this: Why on Earth would anyone want to read such a melancholy tale about three people doomed to such an unfavorable fate? I am being 100% honest when I tell you folks that I did not think I was going to care for this one at all. I didn't think I was going to care for it after the first two chapters either. However, I couldn't stop reading it... I tried to stop, but I couldn't. The prose, as depressing as it is, is still loaded with charm and at the end of the day there's just no denying that Wharton is one hell of a great writer!

This is NOT a novelette that should be required reading for high-school or even college students. Most of their budding brains have not had enough experiences in life to appreciate and fully comprehend this one. This is a very adult yarn, as are most of Wharton's works, loaded with symbolism, while possessing her favorite theme of illicit love. And of all her heartsick idealists, Ethan Frome is without a doubt her most tragic character. In fact, move over Jude Frawley, Tom Joad, Clyde Griffiths, et al... cause Ethan Frome is arguably the most doomed of you all!

Again, my interest never waned while reading this one. It was very beautifully written and extremely thought provoking. What more can one ask for in a book? To say I was pleasantly surprised would be like saying Pablo Picasso was a pretty good painter. 5 Stars despite myself!