Summary from: http://patricktreardon.com/?p=1777
As the novel opens just after the end of World War I, she is
a woman in her mid-40s who is wandering around Europe, skimping by on a small
allowance. It’s an aimless, meaningless life of leisure, spent with other
aimless, purposeless souls awaiting…well, not really anything. This is a kind
of anteroom to hell, and Kate and her circle of acquaintances are biding their
time, biding their lives away.
Her allowance comes from the family in New York that she
abandoned nearly twenty years earlier to go off with Hylton Davies, a man with
a yacht whom she didn’t love and didn’t stay with. It wasn’t so much that she
wanted to be with him, but to get away from the household of her husband John
Clephane and his mother.
A hard man to stay home with John Clephane would have been a
hard man to stay home with. One character describes him as “always a slave of
anything he’d once said. Once he’d found a phrase for a thing, the phrase ruled
him.” Kate herself recalls “the
thick atmosphere of self-approval and unperceivingness which emanated from John
Clephane like coal-gas from a leaking furnace.”
In the first years of her marriage there had been the
continual vain attempt 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 alarming business of living. To escape, however, Kate had to leave
behind her three-year-old daughter Anne.
For better or worse, Kate is living with that decision and
with the life she had made on her own — lonely as it is and frugal and with few
prospects. Since her quick departure from the man with the yacht, she has
enjoyed flirtations (although fewer as she has aged) and treasures the memory
of only one affair, with a younger man named Chris Fenno.
Still, she doesn’t complain. She faces her life with a forthrightness
that is admirable. She is not
exactly self-aware, but she is trying. She understands some things — such as
the fatuousness of many of those she spends her time with — and tries, in her
imperfect way, to understand the rest of her life.
And then she gets the telegrams: Her mother-in-law who has
ruled the family home since John Clephane’s death has died, and Kate’s
daughter, now a young woman — a rich and strong-headed young woman — invites
her to move back into that home. To move back and resume, after so much time,
the role of mother.
So she does. And
it’s wonderful. Kate and Anne are pals. “You two were made for each other,”
someone says. Anne promotes her mother among her friends and the broader
society. No mention is made of the past. It is as if it never happened. Yet, even as this is happening,
events that will shatter the fragile peace Kate has found are beginning, and
the people behind those events are starting to come forward.
In the unfolding of the drama, no character is completely
alert to what’s happening. All of them, to one extent or another, are moving
through the emotions of life with only a vague understanding of how
circumstances and their own decisions have set events into inexorable motion.
1. What
limitations existed for women in the past?
This is the time period where women took off corset, cut
their hair, and got the vote.
Why did she refuse Fred at the end. She ran away once because she didn’t
want to be stifled again. But he
accepted her. She was comfortable with him, but didn’t love him. Her passion was with Chris.
She didn’t stop loving her daughter. She wanted out of the marriage, and
wanted her daughter back after she left, but men with power and means always
got there way.
“Yes; that was it. It was necessary for her pride and
dignity, for her moral safety almost, that what people like Enid Drover would
have called her "past" should remain unidentified, unembodied—or at
least not embodied in Chris Fenno. Yet to know—to know!”
We might want to consider watching the movies Ethan Fromme or
The Graduate.
2. How did those "limits" create scandal and shame?
She was disillusioned with society. When she came back to NYC, she felt the
same rules which stifled her weren’t there anymore, and should have been.
“And it was to escape from reality and durability that one
plunged into cards, gossip, flirtation, and all the artificial excitements
which society so lavishly provides for people who want to forget.”
“She simply could not talk to Anne about Chris—not yet. It
was not that she regarded that episode in her life as a thing to be in itself
ashamed of. She was not going, even now, to deny or disown it; she wanted only
to deny and disown Chris. Quite conceivably, she might have said to her
daughter: "Yes, I loved once—and the man I loved was not your
father." But to say it about Chris! To see the slow look of wonder in
those inscrutable depths of Anne's eyes: a look that said, not "I blame
you", or even "I disapprove you", but, so much more scathingly,
just: "You, mother—and Chris?”
Decisions have consequences.
3. Where were there brief glimpses of
happiness?
“This new resolve gave her a sort of light-headed
self-confidence: when she left the dinner-table she felt so easy and careless
that she was surprised to see that the glass of champagne beside her plate was
untouched. She felt as if all its sparkles were whirling through her.”
We might want to visit her home in Lenox, MA.
Wharton made relationships very deep.
4. Ageing happens. How is desolation her primary identity,
even when in love with Chris?
“She no longer thought of herself as an object of curiosity
to any of these careless self-engrossed young people; she had learned that a
woman of her age, however conspicuous her past, and whatever her present claims
to notice, is fated to pass unremarked in a society where youth so undisputedly
rules.”
“Kate was frightened, sometimes, by its likeness to that
other isolated and devouring emotion which her love for Chris had been.
Everything might have been different, she thought, if she had had more to do,
or more friends of her own to occupy her.”
She was self-centered. She couldn’t find a comfortable spot. She didn’t fit in wherever she
was.
She pondered everything. She didn’t have anything else to think about. She didn’t learn a skill or go to college. She was just a socialite from the upper
class with gossip and lunch.
While the opening Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822; his second
wife Mary Shelley is the author of Frankenstein.) quote, “Desolation is a
delicate thing” uses the word “desolation,” it’s interesting to note that the
word is never used anywhere else in the novel. Here is a poem inspired by the same quote:
Desolation Is a
Delicate Thing
by Elinor
Wylie
Sorrow lay upon my
breast more heavily than winter clay
Lying ponderable upon the unmoving bosom of the dead;
Yet it was dissolved like a thin snowfall; it was softly withered away;
Presently like a single drop of dew it had trembled and fled.
This sorrow, which seemed heavier than a shovelful of loam,
Was gone like water, like a web of delicate frost;
It was silent and vanishing like smoke; it was scattered like foam;
Though my mind should desire to preserve it, nevertheless it is lost.
This sorrow was not like sorrow; it was shining and brief;
Even as I waked and was aware of its going, it was past and gone;
It was not earth; it was no more than a light leaf,
Or a snowflake in spring, which perishes upon stone.
This sorrow was small and vulnerable and short-lived;
It was neither earth nor stone; it was silver snow
Fallen from heaven, perhaps; it has not survived
An hour of the sun; it is sad it should be so.
This sorrow, which I believed a gravestone over my heart,
Is gone like a cloud; it eluded me as I woke;
Its crystal dust is suddenly broken and blown apart;
It was not my heart; it was this poor sorrow alone which broke.
Lying ponderable upon the unmoving bosom of the dead;
Yet it was dissolved like a thin snowfall; it was softly withered away;
Presently like a single drop of dew it had trembled and fled.
This sorrow, which seemed heavier than a shovelful of loam,
Was gone like water, like a web of delicate frost;
It was silent and vanishing like smoke; it was scattered like foam;
Though my mind should desire to preserve it, nevertheless it is lost.
This sorrow was not like sorrow; it was shining and brief;
Even as I waked and was aware of its going, it was past and gone;
It was not earth; it was no more than a light leaf,
Or a snowflake in spring, which perishes upon stone.
This sorrow was small and vulnerable and short-lived;
It was neither earth nor stone; it was silver snow
Fallen from heaven, perhaps; it has not survived
An hour of the sun; it is sad it should be so.
This sorrow, which I believed a gravestone over my heart,
Is gone like a cloud; it eluded me as I woke;
Its crystal dust is suddenly broken and blown apart;
It was not my heart; it was this poor sorrow alone which broke.
5. Most of us agreed she had great
language and was an excellent writer with words – though some sentences were
very, very long.
“The last lame horse had probably long since gone to the
knacker's yard, and no link of sound was left between the Niagara-roar of the
day and the hush before dawn.”
““scramble up hill through the whitening gray of the garden,
flicked by scented shrubs, caught on perfidious prickles, up to the shuttered
villa askew on its heat-soaked rock—and then, at the door, in the laurustinus-shade
that smelt of honey, that unexpected kiss (well honestly, yes, unexpected,
since it had long been settled that one was to remain "just
friends"); and the pulling away from an insistent arm, and the one more
pressure on hers of lips young enough to be fresh after a night of drinking and
play and more drinking. ”
6. How was “mothering”
an important part of her life and identity, even though she didn’t get to do it
for 20 years?
Respected that Anne wanted to do her own thing (time in
studio)
“This business of setting up a studio, now; Anne's so
pleased that you approve. She had a struggle with her grandmother about it; but
poor mother wouldn't give in. She was too horrified. She thought paint so
messy—and then how could she have got up all those stairs?”
“Mothers and daughters are part of each other's
consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the
mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a
habit of thought to her children.”
“But Anne's establishment, which had been her grandmother's,
still travelled smoothly enough on its own momentum, and though the girl
insisted that her mother was now the head of the house, the headship involved
little more than ordering dinner, and talking over linen and carpets and
curtains with old Mrs. Clephane's housekeeper.”
“Then, as to friends—was it because she was too much
engrossed in her daughter to make any? Or because her life had been too
incommunicably different from that of her bustling middle-aged contemporaries,
absorbed by local and domestic questions she had no part in? Or had she been
too suddenly changed from a self-centred woman, insatiable for personal
excitements, into that new being, a mother, her centre of gravity in a life not
hers?”
“She did not know; she felt only that she no longer had time
for anything but motherhood, and must be content to bridge over, as best she
could, the unoccupied intervals. And, after all, the intervals were not many.
Her daughter never appeared without instantly filling up every crevice of the
present, and overflowing into the past and the future, so that, even in the
mother's rare lapses into despondency, life without Anne, like life before
Anne, had become unthinkable”
“Fool that she was, not to have foreseen the consequences of
such a slip! She sat before her daughter like a criminal under
cross-examination, feeling that whatever word she chose would fatally lead her
deeper into the slough of avowal.”
7. We learned some new words
A “walker” is an escort without the baggage; an escort minus the sex.
https://wordofthegay.wordpress.com/tag/slang/
“Walker” describes the man in this equation; a young gay man
that provides company for older women for the purposes of keeping her company,
giving her advice, and escorting her to social events – in lieu of a husband or
boyfriend. A walker will usually accompany a widow or unmarried woman,
and act as both company and a sort of handler or aide. Since the woman is
usually “of a certain age” the term also has a double-meaning, which refers to
a walker,
which is a device used to assist with standing and/or walking.
This term should not be confused either “beard” or “frock,”
which both describe individuals (bread-female, frock-male) who are romantically
linked to either a gay man (beard) or a lesbian (frock) in order to keep their
sexual orientation hidden. Walkers are not necessarily in (or out of) the
closet.
Reaction attachment disorder
Reactive attachment disorder is a rare but serious condition
in which an infant or young child doesn't establish healthy attachments with
parents or caregivers. Reactive attachment disorder may develop if the child's
basic needs for comfort, affection and nurturing aren't met and loving, caring,
stable attachments with others are not established. With treatment, children with reactive attachment disorder
may develop more stable and healthy relationships with caregivers and others.
Treatments for reactive attachment disorder include positive child and
caregiver interactions, a stable, nurturing environment, psychological
counseling, and parent or caregiver education. (Mayo Clinic)
8. Edith Wharton’s Background
Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on Jan. 24, 1862.
Her father was George Frederick Jones; her mother was the former Lucretia
Stevens Rhinelander, and back of each were Colonial and Revolutionary
ancestors. When she was 4 the family went abroad in pursuit of culture, health
and economy, for her father's inherited funds had not increased during the
Civil War that was just ended.
Her early impressions were the international--New York and
Newport, Rome, Paris and Madrid. Added to this was a vivid imagination, which
found outlet in story telling even before she could read. In keeping with the
sheltered life of the time, she was never sent to school, but was taught at
home. She began writing short stories in her early teens, but they were never
about "real people." Little happened to the real people she knew;
what did "happen" was generally not talked about.
It was from this background that Mrs. Wharton was to inherit
the belief from which she never departed, that "any one gifted with the
least creative faculty knows the absurdity of such a charge" as that of
"putting flesh-and-blood people into books." Later critics were to
say that in this was her greatest lack.
The young author wrote her first efforts on brown paper
salvaged from parcels. She was not encouraged. "In the eyes of our
provincial society," she was later to say, "authorship was still
regarded as something between a black art and a form of manual labor."
Each was equally despised in her social level. Her first acceptance was three
poems which she sent to the editor with her calling card attached.
In her autobiography Mrs. Wharton gives a picture of her
literary beginnings along with a picture of her life. Her first novel, written
when she as 11, began: "'Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Brown?' said Mrs.
Tompkins. 'If only I had known you were going to call I should have tidied up
the drawing room.'" The little girl showed it to her mother, whose icy
comment was: "Drawing rooms are always tidy."
But it was Henry James who was her closest friend and most
worth-while advocate. She was always his respectful disciple and, although in
their many meetings he disguised the severity of his judgments with his usual
elaborate verbal courtesies, he managed to convey the meaning of his criticism.
He remained her close friend until his death.
Until 1906 Mrs. Wharton had divided her time between New
York and her Summer home at Lenox, Mass. In that year she went to live in
France, in Summer at Saint Brice and in Winter at Hyeres in Provence.
9. Books Written by
Wharton
Iron & Silk by Mark Salzman
The
Touchstone, 1900 (novella)
The Valley of Decision, 1902
Sanctuary,
1903 (novella)
The House of
Mirth, 1905
Madame de Treymes, 1907 (novella)
The Fruit of
the Tree, 1907
Ethan Frome,
1911 (novella)
The Reef,
1912
Bunner
Sisters, 1916 (novella)
Summer,
1917
The Marne,
1918
The Age of
Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)
The Glimpses
of the Moon, 1922
A Son at the Front, 1923
Old New York: False Dawn, The Old Maid, The Spark, New
Year's Day, 1924 (novellas)
The Mother's Recompense, 1925
Twilight Sleep, 1927
The Children, 1928
Hudson River Bracketed, 1929
The Gods Arrive, 1932
The
Buccaneers, 1938 (unfinished)
Fast and Loose: A Novelette, 1938 (written in 1876–1877)
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