for her husband, who annoys her because he does not understand her and because his
boots creak, she chooses the latter because “ it would break his heart not to fi nd me here
when he comes ” (20). The theme of being “ tied to an inferior partner ” 4 that informs
later novels such as Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence is prefi gured in this fable, but
in this early work, the character does not share the reader ’ s awareness of the situation ’ s
tragedy. By contrast, in Wharton ’ s later fi ction, character and reader alike understand
the tragic consequences of the character ’ s choice, as when Newland Archer contemplates
what his life will be without Ellen Olenska but stays with his wife, May Welland.
The two volumes of stories that Wharton published before 1902, The Greater Incli-
nation (1899) and Crucial Instances (1901), also include a variety of short story forms
and subjects, including several “ artist stories, ” among them “ The Rembrandt, ” “ The
Moving Finger, ” “ The Portrait, ” and “ The Recovery. ” Like those of Henry James,
which they frequently resemble, the “ artist stories ” often feature a painter, writer, or
critic caught in a dilemma between preserving his integrity by being true to his art
and selling out either for the sake of a higher good, such as compassion, or as a means
to greater material comforts. A subset of these stories, such as “ Copy ” and “ Expiation, ”
satirize the process of selling out and the literary marketplace ’ s hunger for sensational-
ism. The artist stories suggest that art is able to represent the truth faithfully but
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Donna Campbell
that artists who conceal the truth or betray their artistic vision, however good their
initial motives may be, are generally harmed by doing so. For example, in “ The Por-
trait, ” Lillo, a painter, is commissioned to paint a portrait of Alonzo Vard, a corrupt
political boss whose only good qualities are brought out by the faith that his daughter
has in him. When Lillo brilliantly renders the terrible truth of the man that he sees
into the portrait and tries, too late, to conceal the truth by painting over the portrait,
the daughter recognizes her father for what he really is. “ The Rembrandt ” poses the
theme of truth in art versus human compassion in a different manner. Asked by his
young cousin Eleanor Copt to assess the Rembrandt owned by the elderly and impov-
erished Mrs. Fontage, the narrator takes pity on the old woman and lies about its
value, telling her that it is a treasure. After various complications, he purchases it for
the museum of which he is a board member, only to have his taste called into ques-
tion by the director. Upon being reassured that the narrator knows that the Rem-
brandt is worthless and that this was a case of philanthropy, not bad judgment, the
director informs the narrator that they have purchased the Rembrandt and are giving
it to him in recognition for his services. The sentence for betraying artistic ideals is
in this case humorous and ironically appropriate, since the narrator and his highly
trained aesthetic sense will have to endure the sight of the bad Rembrandt every day,
but even such a worthy cause as the rescue of an elderly widow merits some form of
punishment when artistic integrity is compromised. In “ The Moving Finger, ” the
artist Claydon is responsible for another sort of philanthropy: he continues to repaint
the portrait of Mrs. Grancy, who died young, so that her grief - stricken widower can
see her grow old with him. Here, too, art reveals a truth almost despite the artist ’ s
intentions: at one point, Mr. Grancy learns that he is dying because he sees the truth
about his health in his wife ’ s portrait, for “ it was the face of a woman who knows that
her husband is dying ” ( Collected Short Stories I. 310). In these stories, art speaks truth
despite the best efforts of human beings to bend the truth to their own ends, an idea
that also resonates in later stories such as
“
The Verdict
”
and, most memorably,
“ The Eyes. ”
Three other signifi cant stories of Wharton ’ s early period also anticipate themes and
subjects in her later work: “ Souls Belated, ” “ The Duchess at Prayer, ” and “ The Angel
at the Grave. ” “ Souls Belated ” nominally takes place in Italy, but its actual locale is
the country that Newland Archer imagines in The Age of Innocence when he tells Ellen
Olenska that he wants to be with her in a place where “ nothing else on earth will
matter ” ( Age of Innocence 174). “ Oh, my dear – where is that country? Have you ever
been there? ” Ellen responds, adding that those who have tried to fi nd it found them-
selves in a place like the “ old world they ’ d left, but only rather smaller and dingier
and more promiscuous ” (174 – 5). In “ Souls Belated, ” Lydia Tillotson also tries to fi nd
that country by eloping with her lover, Ralph Gannett, only to fi nd that the conven-
tions of marriage from which she had fl ed constitute the only protection from the
more sordid world that Ellen Olenska describes. The two live as a married couple and
fear being unmasked as unmarried lovers, yet Lydia, clinging to the idealistic vision
of lovers who remain together only out of love and not out of duty, refuses to marry
Edith
Wharton
123
Gannett even when her divorce is made fi nal. When the fl ashy, vulgar Mrs. Cope,
who has eloped with her aristocratic lover, tries to blackmail Lydia by insinuating
that they are both in “ the same box ” ( Collected Short Stories I. 119) of illicit romance
and pretense, Lydia realizes to her horror that instead of scorning respectability, as
she had prided herself on doing, she has embraced it, thus betraying her ideals by
clinging to the same “ keep - off - the - grass morality ” (122) that she had fl ed when she
left her husband. Trapped by her own hypocrisy, she wants to fl ee again and to leave
Gannett behind, since to marry Gannett and become respectable would imply that
she had never been his mistress in the fi rst place, a pretense abhorrent to her. But
convention is once again too strong for Lydia: as Gannett watches from the window,
Lydia, trying to escape, hesitates and then turns back before boarding the boat that
would take her away from Gannett.
Wharton uses the railroad, which unlike the boat follows a fi xed and immovable
course, to signify the inescapable nature of the lovers ’ fate: the story begins in a railway
car as the lovers try to avoid “ the thing ” (105) – Lydia ’ s divorce decree and the ques-
tion of their marriage – and it ends with the promise of another railway journey as
Gannett looks up the train times for Paris, where, as the lovers have discussed earlier,
they can be married. Despite Lydia ’ s assertions of freedom and unconventionality, the
course of illicit love that they have chosen carries them along as inexorably as the
railway cars in which they travel together to the country that, as Ellen Olenska sees,
does not exist. With these enclosed spaces, they are trapped not only by love but by
a painfully acute awareness of silences and, on Lydia ’ s part, of the “ famine - st
ricken
period when there would be nothing left to talk about ” (105). The supposed happy
ending of Paris and marriage, which would be the stuff of dreams for an adventuress
like Mrs. Cope, is thus a confession of defeat for Lydia and her idealism. Yet marriage
does serve a purpose: it displaces the inevitable boredom of two people living together
from each other onto the institution of marriage itself, as Lydia implies when she tells
Gannett that “ the nakedness of each other ’ s souls ” is too much to bear without the
buffer of marriage ’ s dreary round of “ children, duties, visits, bores ” (125). Gannett ’ s
fi tful attempts at writing make it clear that the marriage, however imperfect or
tedious, also provides a haven for lovers tired of endless journeys and endless subter-
fuge and a space within which to work and live.
“
The Duchess at Prayer
”
likewise features unhappy lovers and also introduces
another important theme in Wharton ’ s work, that of the young woman who is domi-
nated by an older man. Often taking the form of a father – daughter story in which
the daughter is unable to escape the father ’ s powerful will, as in “ The House of the
Dead Hand, ” the motif also appears in the form of a powerful elderly husband domi-
nating his young wife, as in “ Confession ” and “ Kerfol. ” In Wharton ’ s contemporary
stories, the abuse is primarily emotional, but in stories of the past narrated in the
present, like “ The Duchess at Prayer, ” the violence is physical and horrifi c. In a plot
that echoes Robert Browning ’ s “ My Last Duchess, ” in which a visitor is shown the
portrait of the Duke ’ s fi rst wife by the husband who has murdered her, Wharton ’ s
narrator is shown the sixteenth - century Bernini statue of the Duchess Violante, whose
124
Donna Campbell
name fi ttingly evokes both “ violence ” and the “ violation ” visited upon her by her
sadistic husband. Like the courier in Browning
’
s poem, the narrator is told the
story of a young duchess, neglected by an elderly husband, who falls in love
with a young man, the Cavaliere Ascanio. For their trysts, the lovers choose a
crypt that holds the remains of St. Blandina, the patron saint of young girls, who
was tortured to death, a fi tting symbolic commentary on the Duchess
’
s plight.
Suspecting their affair, the Duke presents his wife with a statue of herself and
orders that it be placed over the crypt, thus walling Ascanio up alive. Unable to
rescue Ascanio without confessing their affair, the Duchess falls ill and dies, after
which the statue reveals the truth of her feelings through its horrifi ed expression, a
supernatural transformation effected as the statue blocks the door and presumably
hears the moans of the dying Ascanio. “ The Duchess at Prayer ” shares with the artist
stories the idea that art reveals truth, but the grisly, Poe - like motif of live burial also
provides a symbolic equivalent of the death - in - life marriages that occur in other
Wharton stories.
A variation of this theme of the older man repressing a young woman occurs in
“ The Angel at the Grave, ” in which Paulina Anson ’ s devotion to the reputation of
her grandfather, the minor Transcendentalist Orestes Anson, keeps her entombed in
his house. A votary to his memory, Paulina experiences psychological rather than
physical live burial, yet she accepts her imprisonment willingly. After she rejects
marriage to a young man, Hewlett Winsloe, who refuses to live in Anson ’ s house after
their marriage, Paulina eventually fi nds consolation in preparing a massive biography
of her grandfather. But rejecting the living in favor of the dead has its drawbacks,
among them a shift in literary fashions that has rendered Anson ’ s writings irrelevant.
Like many of Wharton ’ s later characters, Paulina recognizes the uselessness of her
sacrifi ce and the psychic vampirism that claims her youth and vitality: “ I gave up
everything … to keep him alive ” ( Collected Short Stories I. 257). Ironically, one of
Anson ’ s minor writings is rediscovered as a key piece of evolutionary theory, and
Corby, the young researcher who discovers it, praises her for saving Anson and work
that would otherwise be “ irretrievably lost ” (257). Such affi rmation convinces Paulina
that her devotion has not been in vain, and, as she turns “ back into the empty room
she looked as though youth had touched her on the lips ” (258). As the use of the
simile “ as though ” suggests, however, youth has not, indeed cannot, touch Paulina
on the lips again, and the room to which she returns is “ empty, ” as her life has been.
Janet Beer has argued that the story ’ s account of replacing vaporous religious and
philosophical rhetoric with “ the empiricism of evolutionary processes ” (Beer 128)
reveals that “ Paulina ’ s act of memorialisation ” has been “ validated ” (129) by Corby ’ s
arrival and that she escapes “ specimen status ” through her acts of preservation. In an
evolutionary scheme of things, Paulina now fi ts a useful niche through the ideas that
she has preserved and can transmit, and she can thus be benefi cial to the evolution of
human knowledge. But when her fate is viewed on the individual, personal level – the
fate of the individual being of no interest to the forces of evolution – the ambiguous
last sentence suggests that living for someone else ’ s ideas is a muted pleasure at best
and a useless sacrifi ce at worst.
Edith
Wharton
125
The story collections of Wharton ’ s middle period, which include The Descent of
Man, and Other Stories (1904), The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories (1908),
and Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910), contain some of her best work. In addition to
artist tales ( “ The Verdict, ” “ The Potboiler, ” “ The Daunt Diana ” ), historical romances
( “ The Letter, ” “ A Venetian Night ’ s Entertainment ” ) and relationship stories ( “ The
Dilettante, ” “ The Letters, ” “ The Reckoning ” ), these collections include some stories
with more humor, such as the social satires “ The Mission of Jane ” and “ The Other
Two. ” Although it has received less modern critical attention than “ The Other Two, ”
“ The Mission of Jane ” was a favorite of William Dean Howells, who shortly before
his death in 1920 asked Wharton if he could reprint it in The Great Modern American
Short Stories: An Anthology . In “ The Mission of Jane, ” the Lethburys, a couple gradually
growing apart, adopt a baby, Jane, a “ preternaturally good child ” ( Collected Short Stories
I. 371) who grows into a self - righteous young woman. Through the adoption theme,
the story comes down heavily on the “ nature ” rather than “ nurture ” side of the nature –
nurture debate, since nothing in the easygoing Lethburys ’ existence prepares them for
the kind of overbearing conscientiousness that Jane employs with them. In a humor-
ous reversal of the usual oppressive father
-
dominated daughter scenario of other
stories, the burden of Jane
falls especially heavily on Mr. Lethbury, who instead of
dominating Jane is dominated by her. Under Jane ’ s regime of perfect housekeeping
the Lethburys can never relax, and they hold their breath as a suitor appears, hoping
that Jane will marry and leave them. She does, and the two Lethburys happily go out
to dinner together, for Jane “ had fulfi lled her mission after all: she had drawn them
together at last ” (379). “ The Mission of Jane ” provides an ironic twist on several
conventional pieties of American life, among them its obsession with health and
cleanliness, its confi dence that parents naturally love their children, and its belief that
the molding of children ’ s characters is solely in the parents ’ control. Wharton satirizes
the scientifi c housekeeping movement of the era by showing how Jane reorganizes the
household along scientifi c and hygienic principles, and she represents ironically the
conventional belief that children bring a couple together.
“ The Mission of Jane ” also satirizes the advice - ridden popular magazines that pro-
moted rules of cleanliness, structured time, household economy, and moral righteous-
ness as absolute values; what would happen, it asks, if all of those virtues were not
only achievable but packaged in one person who governed everyone else according
to her ideas? Jane is a poster child for the kind of modern childrearing practices pro-
moted by reformers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as Frederick Wegener notes
( “ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton ” 144), but her lack of a “ fusing grace ”
( Collected Short Stories I. 373) of human feeling makes her perfection intolerable to
her parents and most others.
“ The Other Two ” presents an equally satiric look at a social phenomenon: serial
divorce. Newly returned from his honeymoon, Waythorn glows with the pride of
possession as he gazes on his bride, Alice, who is twice divorced and has “ married up ”
with each succeeding husband. Throughout the story, minor incidents link Waythorn
to his predecessors and make interaction with them unavoidable: the illness of Lily,
Alice ’ s daughter by her fi rst husband, Mr. Haskett, means that Haskett must make
126
Donna Campbell
regular visits to Waythorn ’ s house, while the illness of a partner in Waythorn ’ s fi rm,
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 28