Edith WhartonReviews

“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.”

Don't fall for the old myth that classics are boring. This novella of forbidden love, originally published in 1911, is filled with emotion. I didn't want to stop listening to the audio.

Wharton tells the tale of Ethan Frome, his hypochondriac wife Zeena, and Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver. The landscape of Starkfield, MA (particularly the cold, barren winters) is as much of a character as any of the people in the story.

Young Ethan is interested in science and engineering. He wants to escape the nothingness of Starkfield and move to a larger town where people are interested in ideas and education. He loves nature, but has no interest in agriculture. Unfortunately life's circumstances keep him tethered to Starkfield and the family farm. He marries Zeena, though they aren't well-suited. When Zeena's cousin Mattie comes to live with them, he sees an alternative to his bleak life. With Mattie in the house Ethan has a new lease on life -- though his interactions with her are completely chaste. This happiness is short-lived; however. Why? You'll have to read the book ;-)

I have to thank my GR friend Julie for encouraging me to read this. I was not disappointed!

4.5 Stars

If you're looking for accessible classics, Edith Wharton's novellas are a good place to start. Although I preferred [b:Ethan Frome|5246|Ethan Frome|Edith Wharton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389822254s/5246.jpg|132919] over this book, both of these novellas resonated more strongly with me than Wharton's more popular novels ([b:The House of Mirth|17728|The House of Mirth|Edith Wharton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328729186s/17728.jpg|1652564] and [b:The Age of Innocence|53835|The Age of Innocence|Edith Wharton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388248423s/53835.jpg|1959512]).

As in "Frome", "Summer" is set in a small New England town and centers around the complex relationships of just a few main characters. For me, this is where Wharton is at the top of her game. Love is never easy or straightforward on Wharton's pages, and it rarely enters the equation when marriage is concerned.

"Summer" is a sad coming-of-age tale where young Charity Royall learns many of life's cruel lessons -- about class, about men, and about loneliness -- all too soon.

Mrs. Wharton is an excellent writer. She writes a well-crafted plot and takes care that our interest will be held throughout. She knows character and how to flesh it out in fiction. This must come from being a careful and discriminating observer of human behaviour. All her characters in this book are convincing as participants in a developing drama; a crisis that calls for a writer whose familiarity with human foibles will carry the novel through to a satisfying, yet sobering, end.
This novel flows without any authorial interventions which might disturb it. Mrs. Wharton is so sufficiently in command of the contemporary social milieu of the ruling classes of early Twentieth Century America as to lead the reader into a very credible fiction.
The great themes of the book are the condition of mill workers and the degree to which factory owners might alleviate at least sone of their drudgery, the great debate about when life in extremis should be ended for mercy's sake, and the frightful consequences that might ensue when communication between loving partners fails to be open; all as relevant today as in 1902.
Edith Wharton is from the highest echelon of American writers in my opinion.

29. The Children by Edith Wharton
OPD: 1928
format: 266-page ebook
acquired: April 21 read: Apr 21 – May 14 time reading: 10:25, 2.3 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: Classic theme: Wharton
locations: mainly Venice and Dolomites
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

I adore Wharton, but this was not my favorite. Actually I felt the last two, this and [Twilight Sleep], were good but lesser than most of her previous work. A little too much light jokey cute stuff for me. Martin is weird, Judith is a child and Rose is only a side character...

This is a story where single and approaching-middle-age Martin Boyne meets a group of seven children without their parents on a liner in the Mediterranean. He's headed to meet his new probable-fiancé in the Italian Dolomites. But he gets caught up in these wealthy but very neglected children and finds himself helping them, to his seeming detriment.

As readers, we spend this book waiting to see how Martin will manage his unacknowledged attraction to the eldest child, 15-yr-old Judith. He acts appropriately to her every way, but there is so much in his own head that he isn't able to acknowledge that we can't say how he will end up, which is a lot creepy. It's also clear this Judith is using him, but she seems in such need and so innocent.

Martin's Wharton-like fiancé, Rose Sellars, has a problem to manage in her distracted partner. We never see inside Rose's mind, or see her sweat, so to speak. Instead we meet an almost goddess-like steady and always practical woman, quietly maintaining her dignity. Her feelings show through in a painfully quiet manner. She adds a needed dimension to an otherwise flighty book. But she's a side character.

On closing the book, I found myself rethinking on how much Judith may have been managing Martin. That's maybe interesting or maybe silly. But I had to spend a lot of time with silly children and their sillier parents, switching partners with the seasons. Light stuff, kind of cute, kind of funny.

I wouldn't call this one a miss. It has its interesting parts. But I'm hoping the (500-plus-page) [Hudson River Bracketed] has more to offer.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360386#8544840

Sometimes because I studied literature in college I can't remember whether I have read a book before or not. This was one of those books and I definitely had not read this book before. However, I am glad that I took the time to read it. There is something about a forbidden love-love triangle story that ends in tragedy that is quite satisfying. That seems like a moral judgment but I think it is more about the fact that these situations can seldom end well for any of those involved. Of course, some would point to this as a lesson in morality but that is probably missing the point. The point is that it is very easy to think that a bad situation can be easily escaped with the slightest enticement when in fact that is rarely the case.

I found this more dated and of-its-own-time than many much older books.

Maybe 3.5 stars? I’m conflicted because I really wanted to like this book. It took me two years to read this, I would pick it up, put it down, and then start all over again. Finally, I told myself to just finish it and I did like the second half of the book! The Age of Innocence is in my top 3 books, and I really wanted this to be as good as that.

I think I like Edith Wharton's later work compared to her earlier work. I liked this more than The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome, but not as much as I loved The Age of Innocence. That being said, this novel is about love and marriage, and yes, it does go together like a horse and carriage up to a certain point.

I loved how the moon was used in the book and how the symbolism relates to the tarot card of the moon. The moon represents what is below the surface, in this case, what is below the surface of Susy and Nick's relationship. Overall, this was not Wharton's masterpiece, but it was still very good!

I read this because I'm trying to finish up reading the 100 Books to Read Before You Die list. After having read another Wharton book (Ethan Frome) which I hated, I was hesitant to read another one. My original impression of Wharton was accurate....she is easily one of the worst authors I've ever read. I don't know how this won a Pulitzer Prize. There is not a single likable character, and nothing of interest happens...ever.

Wharton is a stupidly superb writer who always seems to pistol whips me back into literary shape. Her sentences are always so precise and rich, and it’s on full display here. Containing a rare happy ending that felt ultimately a bit undeserved, I can’t quite place my hesitancy on this one. The novella is technically quite perfect, so as much as I adore Wharton with everything in my soul, I think it’s a personal taste for moral retribution rather than redemption that makes this one a bit difficult to love.

But still SOOO good!!!!½

Different cover picture

I don’t know what it is I find difficult about Wharton, but I tend to find her writing style a bit too careful and formulaic, and at times the elegance of her highbred American characters can be irksome.

Outstanding! A great surprise ending...wow the last line is a real zinger. Read it once, find out the surprise... then read it again!

Warning to readers...don't conduct book clubs in the manner of members of "The Lunch Club". They're all snobs, pretending to know about a topic that they are completely unfamiliar with!

18. Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton
OPD: 1927
format: 407-page Kindle ebook
acquired: February read: Mar 16 – Apr 3 time reading: 10:12, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic Novel theme: Wharton
locations: 1920’s New York City and some drivable countryside
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

A later Wharton novel that brings some evolution in her writing. This one is considered modern because of the way she handled narrative and switching limited perspectives. The novel is looking at the failures of the 1920's leisure class, people finding various ways to blind themselves from hard realities, while praising progress and spiritual cures.

The novel looks at the efforts to save a bad marriage. Jim, the son of a very wealthy Pauline, married an orphan, Lita, who can't seem to get enough of anything. Jim is insufficient. She wants a divorce and wants to go on and become a movie star. Pauline, along with her own husband, her ex-husband, and her daughter, Nona, all find various ways to get involved, but each from their own limited perspective, and not necessarily in a helpful way. Wharton spends a lot of time on Pauline, who relies on her hired help, and fills her days engaging meaningless contradictory charities and getting healing from spiritual conmen. She is humorously blind to reality, throwing money at all problems. Meanwhile, her family is falling apart.

Twilight Sleep was a medical procedure that put a birthing mother in an amnesic state so they didn't remember the pain of childbirth. It was available only to the very wealthy. Here everyone is trying to not feel the problems of being human, the psychological pain. Pauline by filling her schedule, her current husband by being a workaholic. Lita by searching on for more admiration. Only Nona and Jim are left to actually feel something.

The novel finally comes across as a playful satire on 1920‘s NY moneyed culture. Wharton is having fun mocking supposed progress and 1920‘s shallowness, spiritual fads, bad parenting and human frailties. But there are also real weighty elements here. The youthful 1920‘s are represented in Lita and Nona. Clear-sighted Lita wants to be admired, with no concerns for consequences. Nona quietly sacrifices herself to manage her family‘s failures.

Recommended mainly for Wharton completists, but it's still Wharton. As long as readers are prepared for Wharton to have a little fun, you should be ok. It does reward reflection.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8498520

Realism? Sure. Naturalism? Sure. Happily ever after? Yeah, well...

This is a good novel. I did actually like it and I think it does a great job of integrating the harshness of the New England winters with the plot. If you look into Wharton's life and understand the history of the setting, I think it's even more enjoyable... but that's just me. Book nerd. Still, I recommend reading it if you haven't. I don't want to give any real spoilers, but I do feel like I should give fair warning that the novel is not likely to give you the warm fuzzies... but it's still worth reading. And, hey, it's on Harold Bloom's gigantic list of titles in the Western Canon... so there's that.

It may be the first guidebook to Morocco in English; at least, Wharton was very aware that she was unusually privileged in 1919, passing through a country on the brink of succumbing to mass tourism. She even reported on the road networks being built by the French (Morocco at the time was their protectorate) and assessed them in her capacity of a motor fiend (see Henry James' stricken accounts of tooling with her in her car down the Riviera...)

Most of the book are descriptions (quite beautiful) of places. She is flattering to the French, but after all they were her hosts and enabled her travel, so I don't know how much of that is politeness or real conviction. During the war the preponderant question had been whether France or Germany would prevail in North Africa, nobody gave a thought to something like "native" independence. There'd be some strongman somewhere and you made treaties with him, or threats to him. Whoever he led and whatever territory he laid claim to was a "country" or maybe not. Depending on various interests, but least of all "the will of the people".

She mentions a visit to a Jewish quarter, in Fez, which she says is typical, and that's where I had my first shock--in 1919 that was still a classic ghetto locked up every night, as in medieval Europe, with no Jews allowed out or circulating in other parts of town. Plus a myriad other restrictions and humiliations, and a picture of devastating poverty. I suppose I thought naively the French would have removed such rules... although Wharton writes they aimed, after Lyautey became the resident-general, to interfere with local "customs" as little as possible. (Algeria was a somewhat different story.)

Recently I read some brave youngish Moroccan intellectual saying he wishes for the one million (his number) Amazigh-speaking Jews to return to Morocco (from Israel). That would be an interesting dialogue to follow...

Wharton visited with the women where she was allowed, all from the upper class, sequestered in harems and with less physical freedom than their servants and slaves. It's a dismal picture and unfortunately it was still something you'd experience almost seventy years later.

The Moroccan lady knows little of cooking, needlework, or any household arts. When her child is ill she can only hang it with amulets and wail over it; the great lady of the Fazi palace is as ignorant of hygiene as the peasant woman of the bled. And all these colourless eventless lives depend on the favour of one fat tyrannical man, bloated with good living and authority, himself almost as inert and sedentary as his women, and accustomed to impose his whims on them ever since he ran about the same patio as a little short-smocked boy. {Oh what memories of a nasty little brute who terrorised his sisters and anyone woman-shaped this brought back...} (...) Ignorance, unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes. Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran, and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible to Western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make perfectly comprehensible to Moroccan infancy. {Compare to Taïa's recurring theme of not only being privy to his parents' abundant and unconcealed lovemaking, but the routine sexual games with his siblings...} At eight or nine the little girls are married, at twelve the son of the house is 'given his first negress'; and thereafter, in the rich and leisured class, both sexes live till old age in an atmosphere of sensuality without seduction.

The entrapment of girls into sexual slavery is for me the worst possible aspect of any society. There is no clearer nor more brutal way of showing you think of women as cunts and wombs and things and ways to make men, and not as people. To take an eight year old, nine year old, or as I read not too long ago, in Afghanistan, a six year old, and "marry" her, leave her illiterate and ignorant, disenfranchised and producing babies from the moment the miserable little body can until it can't--there should be a special category for this kind of protracted, repeated, long and slow murder of body and soul.

And then the other slavery, of people one does not "marry"... this was the second shock, that in 1919, "under Western eyes", there were still slaves in all the "good" Moroccan homes, formal slaves, people formally owned by others, like kitchen appliances and foodstuff and donkeys...

While tea was being served I noticed a tiny negress, not more than six or seven years old, who stood motionless in the embrasure of an archway. Like most of Moroccan slaves, even in the greatest households, she was shabbily, almost raggedly, dressed. A dirty gandarah of striped muslin covered her faded caftan, and a cheap kerchief was wound above her grave and precocious little face. With preternatural vigilance she watched each movement of the Caïd, who never spoke to her, looked at her, or made her the slightest perceptible sign, but whose least wish she instantly divined, refilling his tea-cup, passing the plates of sweets, or removing our empty glasses, in obedience to some secret telegraphy on which her whole being hung. (...)
The Caïd's little black slaves are well known in Morocco...(...)

The Living Ain’t Easy

Media: Audio
Reader:Grace Conklin
Length: `6 hours

The most positive thing I can say about this short novel is that it’s well-crafted. Other than that, it’s Wharton at her melodramatic best.

The story has been described as an American Madame Bovary . I can understand why. However I’d throw in a dash of Lolita with a sprinkling of Mansfield Park and a Mandelay zest to give the full offering.

A young child Chastity is moved from a nasty impoverished area to small town by the local orator Mr Royall, who falls in love with her when she reaches adolescence. Chastity meanwhile meets a beguiling young architect Lucas Harney who she falls for after a brief meeting on a dusty road. Harney is infatuated by her beauty but sees her as a sex object and beds her as they used to say back in the day.

They get around in a horse-drawn carriage but unlike Emma Bovary Chastity is true to her name and makes Harney wait until he’s set up a spot in the woods where they can indulge in stillness and privacy.

The older, much older Mr Royall tries to warn Chastity, but he’s done his dash with the young woman by coming onto her once, making a sexual advance when she was younger. She has this act and his subsequent well-deserved shame as an unmentioned bargaining point and she has the power over the man who regrets forever his stupid testosterone-filled move three years before.

True to Royalll’s word, young Harney abandons ship, leaving Chastity to her memories of his love-lust, and the glimpse he gave her of the higher things in life. Architecture and grammar and such.

What to do? He’s gone, she’s preggers and Royall has a few more attempts at winning her - well not back - she despises him - “her hand”.

Meanwhile her mother who is said to be a slut is dying in the hills. Anything more would spoil the tale so I’ll leave the plot there. There are some nice scenes of the wilderness around the small town, and of the wheat fields where Chastity throws herself down in despair over her love.

The characters are a bit of a mishmash but maybe I was getting confused between Royall and Hubert and Lord Mansfield and Maxime. Harney is an easier take. He’s Léon the law clerk from Lyons. And Chastity? More Emma or Fanny Price than Hardy’s Tess or Rebecca. I was having trouble with Chastity’s mood-swings but perhaps it was just her name that was throwing me off.

I gave Summer a 3 for its wordcraft and the bush scenes and the way the story magically picks up pace toward the end. Will Mr Royall prove to be the successful older suitor? You will need to read the book, a must for young unwary female lovers, and for lovers of Wharton.

kind of meandering and tedious at times but at the same time a great book that now that i have finished and can look back on is even more enjoyable

I tend to live in a book-centered world so when I learn of a book or author that intrigues me, I immediately conduct a search and start tagging away for future reading. I’m confident that is exactly how some of Edith Wharton’s novels ended up on my tagged list for my local library. I am new to her writing and wasn’t sure where to begin. I read that Ethan Frome is a reader favorite and it was only a four hour audiobook commitment. I decided this selection was a good place to start.

Immediately, I liked how the audiobook offered an introduction to Edith Wharton with a brief summary of her life and popular works. Ethan Frome is a poor man struggling to keep his family farm and mill operating. His wife, Zeena, is rather unpleasant and a hypochondriac. Her cousin, Mattie, comes to live with Ethan and Zeena to help with the farm and chores around the house due to Zeena’s illness. Mattie is a ray of sunshine to Ethan’s dreary life. As readers would expect, the two fall in love and are determined to be together. The story becomes climatic when the forces of them trying to be together are met with the forces determined to keep them apart. It’s a mesmerizing story with an unexpected ending.

I truly enjoyed this novella by Wharton and look forward to reading more of her work. My book tribe has advised me that her other books are quite different from this one concerning setting. I liked her writing style: her descriptions of scenes and ability to weave an interesting, timeless tale. I predict I will love her work regardless of setting.

I borrowed Ethan Frome in audiobook format from my local library through the Libby app. I absolutely loved the narration by Scott Brick! He is one of my favorite narrators.

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog

8. The Mother’s Recompense by Edith Wharton
OPD: 1925
format: 181-page Kindle ebook
acquired: February 7 read: Feb 7-19 time reading: 8:27, 2.8 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic fiction theme: Wharton
locations: then contemporary French Riviera and Manhattan
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

This oddly bitter pill marks my 18th book by Edith Wharton. I didn't realize this. I've counted twice and still find myself doubting it.

Having said that, this is some of Wharton's best sustained prose, from a prose specialist. Especially in the early sections where Kate is in Europe and then when she first returns to New York after twenty years away, shocked at the changes in life, landscape and values; and uncomfortable at the isolated worlds where appearances she once ran from have been perfectly preserved.

But this is a tricky novel. Wharton loves to crush her readers, and here she confounds us. And I'm pretty sure it's intentional. Kate Clephane ran away from her husband and her baby daughter. Now her husband has passed away, and, after the death of her mother-in-law, the family matron, her daughter calls her home. So, she returns and finds herself welcome. A brief and beautiful happiness ensues, the lost mother found. But who is this Kate now playing mom? She seems unable to tell us, and unable to figure it out herself. And, dear reader, was it merely our Kate who was the problem, or does this past and present stifling and changing NY world have some responsibility?

I never did figure out Kate or what Wharton wanted me to make of her, or what Wharton was doing to me, the reader. But I enjoyed experiencing it. This later Wharton is a good one.

2024:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8437761

I've never read a story where the protagonist was so self-centered and shallow yet so likable. And I've never read a story where money and partying meant so much to the protagonist, aspirations that are so foreign to myself, yet I still felt sympathy for her, and her misfortunes felt so real and callous.

This might be described as a story about New York, high society, partying, traveling, love, scandals, ambition, or money. But most of all this is a story ultimately about Miss Lily Bart's loneliness, and it succeeds in portraying this loneliness so well that I have to recommend it wholeheartedly.

Maternal Melodrama

During the 1920s in America a young woman, Kate, falls for wealthy New Yorker, who turns out to be not according to her taste. The marriage produces a daughter they call Anne, but when Anne is still an infant Kate runs off in the middle of the night to be with a new lover. Anne is left to be raised by her father and after the his death lives alone, with her education and financial cares looked after by a family-appointed guardian. Kate and her new love travel from the marriage home on Fifth Avenue in New York to the French Riviera.

After a short while, Kate dumps her lover, and eventually meets a younger man called Chris, an American with an adventurous spirit who is good in bed. They have a few years of bliss and travel but being young Chris eventually tires of the older Kate and tells a fib - he says he has to return to New York but will be back. He never returns.

While Kate dreams hopefully and uselessly of his return she lives cheaply (by her standards) with her maid, in hotels on the French Riviera where rich Americans flock to what they call “American colonies”.There they pack their days with card playing, dinners, parties and visits from dignitaries, in order that they can forget about whatever past they have left.

Meanwhile the infant Anne has grown up and come of age. She has no memory of her mother Kate, but wants a mother. She’s living in the same Fifth Avenue mansion as the one Kate fled from 18 years ago. Her guardian turns out to be an old admirer of Kate ever since her New York days. He is all for Anne to reunite with her mother. He has been in love with Kate forever but his love has always been unrequited. Kate finds him a bore.

Anne telegraphs to Kate who is surprised to hear from the daughter who she was unable to even visit after she fled the mansion. Anne asks Kate to return. Kate does, happy to leave her shallow life.

The ingredients: A thityish man, sexy and adventurous, but poor
A woman in her fifties still good-looking but on a fixed income.
An adoring older New York gentleman who loves Kate
Anne, the ingenue who wants a mother.

The rest would require a very large spoiler alert, so I’ll leave the action there, but action there surely is.

The book is well-written, and it’s an enjoyable read. Will she or won’t she? Noting there are two she’s. There is a bit of a drift into melodrama, but what does it matter? The writing is good and we are kept interested.

Recommended for those not averse to melodrama.½

Oh my goodness I've been so bored, and since the only reason I was reading it was for book club, and I can't go to this one, I am putting it aside. She makes some interesting observations, and maybe if it was a time in history I was vaguely interested in I might enjoy it more, but for now I need something way more engaging.

I am sure I read Ethan Frome in high school. The story is vaguely familiar. But reading it now with more detailed knowledge of the time period in which it was written and in which it is set, and perhaps the wisdom of many more years and experiences, was a joy. I mightn’t have noticed the exquisite detail in Edith Wharton’s writing back then, but made an impression this time. I won’t say more. My book club is discussing this book this Friday.