What an oddity. ( )

Edith Wharton's novella about moral choice and temptation spreads itself over two generations and two men's moral dilemmas. The woman at the center of this story is first a girl on the edge of marriage, who discovers a dark secret regarding the man she is to marry, and a mother, whose son must make a similar choice. In this world, where money is king, I dare say most people would never resist the temptations presented to these men.

I read this at one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed the story and waiting, like Kate, to see which would be chosen, the easy way or the moral one. ( )

Kate marries a man she knows to be morally deficient in order to protect whatever unborn children he may have from his moral lapses. Fast forward and Kate is now widowed and living with the son she had with this man. The son Dick is an architect, and through various circumstances the moral choices Kate feared her husband's children might one day face are now imminent.
This theme of moral choices and what makes a person "good" reminded me of the first Litsy Wharton read, The Touchstone (see >179 arubabookwoman:), only this time the issue is explored from the woman's point of view. Then it turned into a sort of nature v. nurture kind of thing. Wharton writes beautifully, and there are hints of the intricacies of her later novels in this short work. I'm glad to have read this.

3 stars ( )

46. Sanctuary by Edith Wharton
published: 1902
format: 52-page kindle ebook (typically ~ 100 pages)
acquired: September 7
read: Sep 27
time reading: 2:46, 3.2 mpp
rating: 4
locations: California?, New York City
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Spent most of her writing life in France.

Wharton‘s 3rd work of fiction, a novella from 1902, consists of two connected parts around Kate Peyton, née Orme. First a naïve Kate discovers her fiancé has conned an inheritance, and she still marries him. In part 2 her son has a moral quandary. Kate is passionately well-meaning, morality driven and likable, but strained by circumstance, and ultimately humanly flawed. She has to discover for herself her charmed “life was honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage.” And, she struggles herself to understand her relationship with her son, whose life she is maybe over-involved in. ("As she sat there in the radius of lamplight which, for so many evenings, had held Dick and herself in a charmed circle of tenderness, she saw that her love for her boy had come to be merely a kind of extended egotism.") She never does seem to realize how awkward is what she is doing. I think it's fair to say a lot is going here that she doesn't really understand.

I enjoyed this and reading with a Wharton group on Litsy. It gave me a lot to think about. Our next book with be [House of Mirth].

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7618914 ( )

I didn't end up liking this as much as I thought I would. Kate stands on her moral high ground and judges both her husband and son but I don't believe as much in her 'do the right thing' when she does end up marrying her husband despite what she sees as his failings. The part about the son then just felt odd and weird. Not my favourite Wharton.