Madame de Treymes and Other Stories
by Edith Wharton
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An American tries to escape her marriage to a French aristocrat in the title story of this collection. Additional tales include "Autres Temps ...," "The Long Run," and "The Triumph of Night.".Tags
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Although it's only been 7 years since I read this book I have no recollection of any of the four stories within!
I am sure the prose is as polished and brittle as any other Wharton but it will have to wait for a re-read... if it gets that lucky!
I am sure the prose is as polished and brittle as any other Wharton but it will have to wait for a re-read... if it gets that lucky!
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379+ Works 63,782 Members
Edith Wharton was a woman of extreme contrasts; brought up to be a leisured aristocrat, she was also dedicated to her career as a writer. She wrote novels of manners about the old New York society from which she came, but her attitude was consistently critical. Her irony and her satiric touches, as well as her insight into human character, show more continue to appeal to readers today. As a child, Wharton found refuge from the demands of her mother's social world in her father's library and in making up stories. Her marriage at age 23 to Edward ("Teddy") Wharton seemed to confirm her place in the conventional role of wealthy society woman, but she became increasingly dissatisfied with the "mundanities" of her marriage and turned to writing, which drew her into an intellectual community and strengthened her sense of self. After publishing two collections of short stories, The Greater Inclination (1899) and Crucial Instances (1901), she wrote her first novel, The Valley of Decision (1902), a long, historical romance set in eighteenth-century Italy. Her next work, the immensely popular The House of Mirth (1905), was a scathing criticism of her own "frivolous" New York society and its capacity to destroy her heroine, the beautiful Lily Bart. As Wharton became more established as a successful writer, Teddy's mental health declined and their marriage deteriorated. In 1907 she left America altogether and settled in Paris, where she wrote some of her most memorable stories of harsh New England rural life---Ethan Frome (1911) and Summer (1917)---as well as The Reef (1912), which is set in France. All describe characters forced to make moral choices in which the rights of individuals are pitted against their responsibilities to others. She also completed her most biting satire, The Custom of the Country (1913), the story of Undine Spragg's climb, marriage by marriage, from a midwestern town to New York to a French chateau. During World War I, Wharton dedicated herself to the war effort and was honored by the French government for her work with Belgian refugees. After the war, the world Wharton had known was gone. Even her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence (1920), a story set in old New York, could not recapture the former time. Although the new age welcomed her---Wharton was both a critical and popular success, honored by Yale University and elected to The National Institute of Arts and Letters---her later novels show her struggling to come to terms with a new era. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), Wharton acknowledged her debt to her friend Henry James, whose writings share with hers the descriptions of fine distinctions within a social class and the individual's burdens of making proper moral decisions. R.W.B. Lewis's biography of Wharton, published in 1975, along with a wealth of new biographical material, inspired an extensive reevaluation of Wharton. Feminist readings and reactions to them have focused renewed attention on her as a woman and as an artist. Although many of her books have recently been reprinted, there is still no complete collected edition of her work. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Belongs to Publisher Series
Virago Modern Classics (146)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Madame De Treymes and Three Novellas [The Touchstone, Sanctuary, Bunner Sisters]; Madame de Treymes and Other Stories
- Alternate titles
- Madame de Treymes and Others: Four Short Novels
- First words
- Professor Joslin, who, as our readers are doubtless aware, is engaged in writing the life of Mrs. Aubyn, asks us to state that he will be greatly indebted to any of the famous novelist's friends who will furnish him with info... (show all)rmation concerning the period previous to her coming to England. (The Touchstone)
It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within reach of the awakening clutch on life. (Sanctuary)
John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue di Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens. (Madame de Treymes)
In the days when New York's traffic moved at the pace of the drooping horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nilsson at the Academy of Music and basked in the sunsets of the Hudson River School on the walls of the Nation... (show all)al Academy of Design, an inconspicuous shop with a single show-window was intimately and favourably known to the feminine population of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square. (Bunner Sisters)
The four long stories or short novels contained in this volume were not originally published together, and were written over a span of eighteen years. (Introduction) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She walked on, looking for another shop window with a sign in it. (Bunner Sisters)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"The happiness of giving," she said. (The Touchstone)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"I'm an abysmally weak fool, you know," he ended; "I'm not worth the fight you've put up for me. But I want you to know that it's your doing - that if you had let go an instant I should have gone under - and that if I'd gone under I should never have come up again alive." (Sanctuary)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Ah, you poor, good man!" she said with a sob. (Madame de Treymes)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But these are only some of the pleasures that lie before you in this volume. (Introduction) - Disambiguation notice
- This work contains four novellas:
Madame de Treymes
The Touchstone
Sanctuary
Bunner Sisters
even though only Madame de Treymes may appear on the cover.
Please do not co... (show all)mbine this with the Penguin 60s edition, which is a much smaller work containing only a single novella.
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- English, French
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- ISBNs
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