Michelle Bailat-Jones

Writer, Translator, Reader

Posts from the ‘Edith Wharton’ category

podcasts and Edith Wharton

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No one ever mentioned that reading would become a problem in late pregnancy. I don’t mean reading in and of itself, thankfully, but rather, finding a comfortable position to sit and read for any duration of time. Particularly in the evening. I’m used to settling down on the couch or curling up with a book in bed and reading for at least an hour or two each evening, and much to my surprise, this has become incredibly difficult. Mostly because the most comfortable way for me to relax at the moment is to lie on my left side with about a hundred pillows propping me up from every direction. Unfortunately, it suddenly becomes very awkward to hold a book.

Watching a movie, on the contrary, is very easy. My husband and I don’t own a TV, but we love movies and so watch them on a laptop. And we’ve been going through a bunch of Agatha Christie films and shows. Because of this we’ve been having an ongoing debate about David Suchet vs. Peter Ustinov. I think I’m a confirmed Ustinov fan, although I think Suchet is incredible as well. I might be biased, however, by my real-life appreciation for Ustinov, who was an absolute linguistic genius.

Back to the topic at hand – I have managed to do some reading before bed using my Ipod and I’m enjoying a selection of short stories offered by Librivox as well as The Classic Tales podcast. The other night I listened to an interesting short story by Edith Wharton called The Fulness of Life. As the story opened I was at first surprised by Wharton taking up such a metaphysical subject as a woman going to heaven and dealing with happiness in the afterlife. But as the story continued, I realized this story dealt exactly with Wharton’s overall project of marital bliss and difficult choices.

In the story, an unnamed woman dies and goes to heaven. When she arrives, she’s overwhelmed with the beauty of paradise and the chance to experience what she calls, “what it means to really live.” Her conversation with the guardian spirit reveals that she lived on earth in a ho-hum marriage with a man who, although kind, was not her intellectual equal, and that she never experienced true passion. To this declaration, the spirit says:

“that every soul which seeks in vain on earth for a kindred soul to whom it can lay bare its inmost being shall find that soul here and be united to it for eternity.”

As expected, the woman is overjoyed. And soon a man appears – her kindred spirit. They discuss things for a moment, finishing each other’s sentences and getting more and more excited. Until the woman discovers that when the man who was her husband on earth dies, he’ll be alone in paradise to make his way and find his own happiness. The woman realizes that although she was never fully happy with him while they lived, he believed she was his soul mate. So she knows that by leaving him in the afterlife to pursue her own happiness, she’ll be deserting him.

So she is left with a difficult choice. I won’t give away the ending exactly but if you’re familiar with Wharton at all, I suspect you can guess what this woman decides to do. I can’t help thinking it particularly cruel or cynical of Wharton to bring her view of marriage into the ever after. Her heroines never, ever get a break, do they?

Wharton's Ethan Frome and Summer

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Last week when I wrote that I was reading Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, a thoughtful commenter mentioned that it might be interesting to read Ethan Frome and Summer together, since they are both “rural” novels, a bit different from the big city novels we often associate with Wharton.

Although I’ve read several Wharton novels, I did not realize that she wrote so many. There are 22 novels to be exact, and most of the titles are completely unfamiliar to me. I enjoy Wharton’s writing, although I know enough now to prepare myself for a melancholy, if not tragic, ending. Wharton has a particular skill at portraying the right blend of injustice and personal folly in her stories. Her characters suffer at the hand of fate, but have also contributed in some measure to their vulnerability. At least this is true for the five novels I’ve now read.

I would highly recommend reading Ethan Frome and Summer together, not just for their similarities but for their contrast. Both are quite dark, in terms of subject matter, but where the setting and ambience of Ethan Frome mirror the psychological darkness of the story, Summer takes place in a light-filled, nature-inspired and overtly sensual environment that lulls the reader into a false sense of security about the direction of the story. I had to remind myself around Chapter 12 that this was a Wharton novel and not to get my hopes up for a happy ending.  

Ethan Frome is absolutely tragic and it felt nearly like a gothic novel with all the gloom and cold and hints at madness in the female characters. And Ethan is a lurker, someone who keeps to the sidelines and watches and waits. But the novel’s central thread is about a possible infidelity, an infidelity Wharton makes the reader hope will be accomplished. I liked this trick of soliciting the reader’s complicity because then we are really saddened by the novel’s final dénouement.

I’m hard pressed to say whether Summer is more tragic than Ethan Frome. So much of the novel is lighthearted and cheerful. Although there are repeated warnings that this happy façade is crumbling. So in that sense, when the disastrous ending finally comes around, it isn’t so much a revelation as a confirmation.  While the ending of Ethan Frome contains an element of spooky surprise, the ending of Summer does not at all. It is exactly what the reader has been brought to expect.

Essentially Summer tells the story of an ill-fated love affair between a small town girl, Charity, and a city boy, Harley. (Reminded me in many ways of George Eliot’s Adam Bede). There are complications with Charity’s guardian, a situation that creates an interesting love triangle. The story, which was originally published in 1917, is actually quite scandalous and it gave me a real appreciation for Wharton’s daring. She certainly does not shy away from depicting the harsh realities of sexual relationships of the time period. And although Charity does have a hand in her undoing, I felt Wharton was pretty concerned with portraying the double-standard regarding sex as applied to men and women.

So now I am quite curious to delve into the rest of Wharton’s work. Does anyone have any recommendations about some of her lesser known novels? I’ve read The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers and now these two…