All the ormolu that’s fit to print: Works of Edith Wharton
Works of Edith Wharton does not contain all of Wharton’s works — to fit the novels and the gardening/architecture stuff and the erotica and the letters and all the other “and”s into one volume obviously isn’t possible, so a selective sampling is indicated. Perhaps not this particular sampling, however, because the grouping is peculiar, and then each selection is somewhat peculiar also.
The first work, Ethan Frome, strikes me as the least recommended. I had never read it before, but my understanding is that every other graduate of junior year did already, and that the memory is not necessarily a fond one — if it has even persisted. (I have no hard data on that, just anecdotal evidence, but those anecdotes derive from the ’80s; the book has a publication date of 1987.) The publisher may have wanted to draw the reader in with a recognizable title, to reassure him that Wharton is familiar and worthwhile. The fact remains that this Wharton, while both familiar and worthwhile, is also bleak, atypical of her fiction, and associated in the minds of many erstwhile teenagers with the drudgery of assigned reading.
So, I wouldn’t include it in an omnibus, but I liked it a lot. Wharton typically deals in layering, tweaking, nuance by volume, tissue upon dryly observed tissue of detail; not everyone has the patience required for the effect to accumulate, but it’s powerful in its way. In Frome, the writing is more direct, the strokes broader. She’s dealing with her characteristic themes — the strictures of Society; the one cowardly or self-destructive moment that leads to a lifetime of emotional imprisonment — but explicitly. It’s why Frome is what most of us read in high school, instead of the often-opaque The House of Mirth; it’s easier to tease out the motifs.
The House of Mirth is the second section of the book, and I reread it in its entirety despite having read it many times already and written a college thesis on the damn thing. It’s devastating each time, all over again, somehow; that I still get just as frustrated with Lily, resentful of Selden, and dismissive of the Van Osburghs as I did the first time I read it 20 years ago is a testament to Wharton’s powers, which reached their height with The House of Mirth.
She nails every description, sometimes with a slow build (the evolution of Simon Rosedale, which is as exact and painstaking a character portrait as it is offensive in its uncoded anti-Semitism), sometimes with a quick slash (Grace Stepney of the pink nose and rustling fabrics). The Gerty Farish sequences can go on too long, but then, so does the showdown with Gus Trenor, for a different reason; Wharton has successfully translated the way a trap can seem to bend time in both directions. The Age of Innocence is, I think, considered Wharton’s crown jewel, and I love its expensive sorrows too, but it comes from a different, more gently felt place. Mirth hurts more.
The last segment is a collection of short stories, Tales of Men and Ghosts. It’s the most interesting section for Wharton fans, but at the same time the most tedious to get through, because Wharton’s meticulous anti-crescendo m.o. can backfire at shorter lengths, and at times, all the build-up leads to…nothing much. (Or nothing comprehensible. “The Blond Beast” ends on a line clearly meant as a shocking reveal, but I don’t know to whom the reveal refers, thanks to an unclear pronoun, and don’t care about the characters in the first place.)
The ghost stories suffer from pacing problems; she’s trying to build anticipation and put the reader on edge, but too often, the characters take too long to learn what I’d figured out pages ago…and then sometimes we learn these things at the same time, but then the characters let all the air out of the climax by explaining it to themselves in flashback for another 17 paragraphs…while pacing a carpet that they also describe in Identi-Kit-level detail instead of wrapping things the hell up already. It’s a shame that the book ends on “The Letters,” because Wharton puts together a captivating lead-up with a quirky tempo, hits the moment of truth like a bell tone, then Shyamalans herself in the foot and shambles to a close several pages later, on an ambiguity that isn’t purposeful.
It has good bits, though, passages where her vinegary exactitude lets you forget that the road doesn’t lead anywhere. Several of the stories do work, and “The Bolted Door,” with its “bruised, ruined, fallen melon,” is hilarious. But that portion of the book probably works better as a case study for people who already like Wharton than as a short-story collection, because the aspects of her prose that people dislike, or think they do, aren’t reined in.
Taken together, the specific choices present as whatever the publisher had the rights to, but as a grouping, it just doesn’t quite make sense: the novel everybody read but nobody loved; the novel nobody read but three of us loved fiercely; the indulgent stories with tiny waists and club feet. Completists, caveat lector; everyone else, get the edition with Mirth, AoI, The Reef, and The Custom of the Country and read them in reverse. It’s a better use of your time.
Tags: books Edith Wharton Eric Stoltz Gillian Anderson M. Night Shyamalan movies
The first Wharton I ever read was Ethan Frome, though I read it on my own in college after having heard what a delightful wit Wharton is. I was seriously put off, and it took me 7 years years to pick up another one. Earlier this year I read Age of Innocence, and I ended up staying up all night to finish it one night, it’s just that good.
I recall that Ethan Frome was even name-checked in Grosse Pointe Blank for its reputation of sheer assigned-reading horror.
“Are you still inflicting all that horrible Ethan Frome damage? Is that off the curriculum?”
“It’s off the curriculum now.”
“That was a horrible book.”
First, I didn’t know Wharton wrote erotica. That’s news to me.
I hated “Mirth” only because of how the story turned out, and I REALLY hated the movie (I’m sorry, but Eric Stoltz? No. Anthony LaPaglia? Any time, especially when compared with wimpy, whiny Eric Stoltz – my apologies in advance to any devoted fans). I’ve always said that in Lily Bart’s place, I’d have married Mr. Rosedale and crushed my opponents like eggs, but that’s me. :)
Like you, I love “Innocence” – both the movie and the book. Okay, so Winona Ryder wasn’t ideally cast. I still love it.
And the first time I ever heard of “Ethan Frome” was, oddly through “Peanuts,” when Linus’s book report states that he’s too young to understand the emotions to write a proper report and he gets an A. Years later I read it, and I didn’t hate it, but it’s certainly no children’s fairy tale.
I had to read Ethan Frome in the mid to latish 90s for sophomore English and remember finding it pretty dreary — however everything I read for that class seemed pretty dreary and pointless thanks to that particular teacher. Maybe I should add it to Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a book I need to re-read now that that class is far behind me.
Hee! ‘Shyamalans herself in the foot’ is a perfect criticism and hilarious, to boot.
Love, LOVE “House of Mirth.” I read it over at least once a year (usually in July, for some reason). I also would have married Rosedale and made Bertha’s life a living hell.
Me too, especially if he looked like LaPags. I didn’t think that was the best casting, but still.
Wharton is one of those writers I keep meaning to read the best works of, but never quite get around to. Although I love watching the movie version of HoM. I am devastated every single time, and romantically weepy for hours.
And I second LaZip – “Shyamalans herself in the foot” is fantastic!
More anecdata: I read Ethan Frome as a high school freshman in 1998-’99. As I recall, it was by far my least favorite book of the year, although I didn’t have the greatest appreciation for literature at the time.
I read Ethan Frome on my own a couple years ago, and I totally understand why anyone who had that as their forst Wharton would be put off by it. It is so freakin’ depressing.
I read HoM for my Women Writers class in college and I loved it. I have an aversion to non-Scully Gillian Anderson though so I refuse to see the movie.
Never had to read Ethan Frome in high school. Is it as pointless as The Sun Also Rises? That remains my least favorite reading assignment book of all time.
Unfortunately, I saw the “House of Mirth” before I read it, and thus couldn’t read the characters without picturing each as the actor who portrayed him or her. Rosedale is unapologetically painted as oily and revolting in the book, while (as y’all have already mentioned) LaPaglia is…not revolting. And I agree that Stoltz = utterly noncompelling love interest. If that runny vanilla shake is all that stands between me and beating Bertha into a thin red paste, she’s a stain already.
Sars, you’re totally right, here. I know that “The Age of Innocence” is supposed to be Wharton’s masterpiece, but I always, ALWAYS find “The House of Mirth” more fascinating. Watching Lily Bart’s inexorable doom is like watching a mouse fall victim to a python. You know what’s going to happen, you keep wishing she’d do something, ANYTHING, to stop it, and you know she won’t, because she thinks she can’t.
I read Frome voluntarily in secondary school, and loved it. The reveal gave me chills. Funnily enough, The Age of Innocence was the one we had to read in class, and I loved it too.
HoM drove me MAD the first time. Why could Lily not do ANYTHING to save herself? Even now, when I read it, I can’t help feeling like, if she won’t do a single thing to save herself, she doesn’t deserve to live. Harsh, but… gah. I too would have married Rosedale (he saw her a lot clearer than Selden ever did) and felt good about it.
I love that you’ve been reading Wharton and love her as I do- she’s been my favorite author since I was about 13 (because I apparently have always been a huge dork).
My anecdote: my mom read Ethan Frome to me while she stayed with me in the hospital after my scoliosis surgery when I was 15. Something about listening to that book, mostly in the middle of the night when I was in too much pain to sleep and my mom loved me enough to stay up with me, was so visceral and close and real that I loved it so, so much. But I’ve never been able to pick it up to read on my own, it still brings that all flooding back. Goes to show how much circumstance intrudes on book response, eh?
Okay, so I guess a mystery is irresistible…I just read The Blond Beast on that link, and I don’t quite get it, either (although I am 100% sure it is the main narrator, Millner, saying the last line) but I did dig around and figure out that the title refers to this [from wikipedia]: “It is in the First Treatise that Nietzsche introduces one of his most controversial images, the “blond beast”… Nietzsche expressly insists that one ought not to hold beasts of prey to be “evil” merely for their utilizing their own strength… Only the weak need the illusion of the subject (or soul) to hold their actions together as a unity. But they have no right “to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey.”
Which definitely sheds a ton of light on the story as a whole, but…I still don’t quite get it, or what the last line is intended to mean.
Despite the delightful opulence of Age of Innocence, due only to the director of that film, Edith Wharton is pretty much a downer. OMG.
Ethan Frome, the Bunner Sisters, … House of Mirth? I think Edith was systematically using literature to plan out the unhappy futures of all those who pissed her off in early life. Just got that feeling.
Natalie, I had the same experience, although I still haven’t made it back to Wharton yet. God, Ethan Frome and the shattering red glass pickle dish. Could there be a more heavy-handed symbol of phallus plus loss of virginity? Doubtful.
Oh, Edith is my homegirl.
She has much, much better short stories. The very first thing I ever read by her was her story ROMAN FEVER, which is the first time I’ve ever read something where the plot twist came in the very last sentence — and I’ve shown that story to at least four people now who’ve audibly reacted at the ending (“DAY-um!!!!”)
But my all-time, hands-down favorite story of hers, ever EVER, is a comedic piece called XINGU — which is essentially about a woman exacting her revenge against the snarky fellow members of her book club. I loved it so much I adapted it for the stage about 6 years ago — the cast had a blast with it and I had a blast watching it. (I didn’t have to do much to adapt it, to be honest — the dialogue in the original story is absolutely delicious, and I just had to transcribe it. Edith did all the work.)
@Jeanne: I too used to have an aversion to non-Scully GA, but I would say to give HoM a chance. She was also wonderful in the BBC adaptation of “Bleak House.”
@Kim W: I had never heard of “Xingu” until a year or so ago, and my first thought was, “I bet that’s where James Thurber got the name for the prince’s alias in ‘The Thirteen Clocks’.” Or did she get the name from him? IIRC, she died before Thurber really got started on his career.
@ Kim – XINGU!!!!! I love that story!! It’s brilliant… you’re right, I forgot all about it, but it’s a terrific short story with so much humor!!!
I went to a public high school — a pretty good one, but a public nonetheless — and in my junior year honors English class we had to write term papers on major American works of literature. The book we selected had to be approved by our teacher before we began working. I had heard good things about Wharton and I asked if I could do my paper on Ethan Fromme. I’m not sure why I wanted to do “Ethan” — maybe it was because it was named after a male character and could possibly be homoerotic? My teacher turned me down flat. “It’s not a major work of literature. If you want to read Wharton, I’ll let you do ‘Age of Innocence’ or ‘House of Mirth’, but I’m vetoing ‘Ethan Fromme’.”
So not only was I NOT forced to read Ethan Fromme…I was kind of forced NOT to. Apparently I dodged a bullet.
Sars, would you mind telling us more about your House of Mirth thesis? I’m consumed with curiosity. I just find Lily so, so frustrating as she sabotages herself with athletic vigor, repeatedly.
It’s also such a strange time period, in theory far away, when an unmarried twenty-nine-year-old female is a “girl”, but a married female of nineteen is a “woman” (as in “adult”). But there are still plenty of folks nowadays who are professional party-goers, sliding by on their charm and what they bring to the party. Sadly, there are also still plenty of folks who would agree that Lily was rapidly approaching her sell-by date (if she hadn’t already overshot it). If you wouldn’t mind sharing, I’d love to know what the thesis was about. Heck, I’d love to read it. (Disclaimer: no, I’m not in college, facing a deadline. I’m just a big geek.)
Also? It is always LaPags FTW. In terms of casting for “not appealing”, that’s not going to be terribly believable.
Ugh, Ethan Frome. Put me off Wharton until this year, when I read Age of Innocence and fell firmly in love. That said, it’s not Wharton’s fault. My junior year English teacher identified STRONGLY with Zenobia, in a way that made every day of class deeply uncomfortable. It’s taken me years (and the Bourne movise) to enjoy Joan Allen’s work.
@evil fizz, I wish you’d been in my senior comp class so there would have been somebody to back me up. I ended up reading Ethan Frome by chance since it was one of the few things on the list of approved books provided for the assignment that I hadn’t already read — if only I’d taken that gift wrapped opportunity to slack off — and my teacher looked completely dumbfounded that I’d hated it when I admitted it after the papers were returned. (She’d made it clear she liked all the books on the list when she gave the assignment.) Not that I disliked it, but that ANYONE could. She either got a lot of papers that left the students’ opinions out like mine did, or other people were lucky enough to be warned off by a parent or classmate. I refuse to believe that she taught for 15 years before finding someone who hated Ethan as much as I do.
I keep meaning to read something, anything else by Wharton to see if it was the book and not the author that was the issue but I just haven’t been able to do it yet even though holding such an intense a grudge against a novel makes me feel kind of silly. The short stories sound like they could be worth a shot, some of my favorites don’t really go anywhere but they meander nowhere interestingly and that’s enough.
@ Jaybird: “If that runny vanilla shake is all that stands between me and beating Bertha into a thin red paste, she’s a stain already.”
Oh, Jaybird, I love it, love it, love it. Couldn’t possibly have put it better myself.
@RJ: Yes, Wharton wrote erotica, although I don’t think any of it was published in her lifetime. I haven’t read any of it, though I’ve heard it’s interesting.
I love Edith Wharton and also did a college thesis on her work. I’ve never read Ethan Frome, liked The House of Mirth quite a bit, but I think The Age of Innocence is to die for.
I’m so glad that you posted about Edith Wharton. She is my homegirl as well. Age of Innocence is a perfect little gem of a novel, and the movie was a lovingly faithful rendering and beautifully cast. I read Ethan Frome voluntarily as part of an undertaking to read EW’s ouvre complet, and yeah, it isn’t exactly sweetness and light, but it is memorable and cautionary in its way. Her short stories ROCK, and the Library of America is publishing all of them in two or three volumes. My anecdote: I walked into Major Chain Bookstore, and a helpful clerk takes one look at me and proceeds to direct me to Contemporary African-American Fiction. I told her that I was actually looking for the Hermoine Lee biography of Edith Wharton, whereupon she looked suitably chastened and chagrined. Long story short, we wound up chatting for half an hour, and I made a new friend. Cool, huh?
Oh, God. Ethan Fromme. I remember having to read that in the summer prior to, I thought, freshman year in high school, although if it was published in 1987, I guess not. I was in high school just a *tad* earlier than @bottomoftheninth. All I remember about it was my reaction to the ending, which was something along the lines of, “Seriously?! A F*CKING TREE?!?!?”
@LaB.: It’s about a century ago now, but I believe I posited that, in contrast to the many scholars who identified capital-S Society as the villain in HoM, Lily herself is her own worst enemy — that regardless of whether a given vignette puts Lily in opposition to Society or in alignment with it, she tends to self-sabotage.
My advisor wasn’t real familiar with the material, but suggested that Lily’s self-destructive tendencies are in fact her trying to rise up against the system — the One vs. the Group — which is a valid reading, and one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other, but if you subtract the biographical information we have about Wharton herself from the equation, it’s marginally easier to make the case that Lily’s actions comment on the individual, and not on the system in which she is acting.
…Amazing how, after YEARS left dormant, the Bullshitting-Diction-Of-Academe-O-Tron will still run with the flick of a switch. Hee.
Sars, thank you! And, obviously (as you can see from my unwittingly sapient observation), I TOTALLY agree with you. I would go so far as to say rather than Society being Lily’s enemy, Lily was doing her 14-karat gold-plated darnedest to a part of that Society, and Society had, in fact, shown its willingness to welcome Lily. It was Lily herself who ruined her chances of being One with the Group. Oh, sure, she had buckets of help along the way – but she was the one who created the opportunities for other people to help her down the ladder. With minimal application, she could have achieved her goal, if only she hadn’t leapt at the wrong choice at every turn.
Heh. Felicia, I’ll say “Thank you,” and take an unmerited bow in response to your “Age of Innocence is a perfect little gem of a novel, and the movie was a lovingly faithful rendering and beautifully cast.” Yes, there in the Opera House, I glitter and dazzle as part of the background, for about thirty seconds; that’s my contribution to Edith Wharton trivia!
That’s so cool, La BellaDonna!
And FWIW, I think the Lily-as-her-own-victim reading works better than Society-as-villain. Lily clearly knows the rules, including virtually every nuance of same, so it isn’t as though she doesn’t KNOW what to do, or how, or to/with whom. She’s almost a distaff Hamlet, paralyzed by indecision.
I really wanted to be a literature major, but went to a business college. Bugger.
I didn’t mind Eric Stoltz as Selden (I also read the book after seeing the movie, so now I can’t imagine anyone else in any of the roles), since I had a big ol’ crush on him after “Some Kind of Wonderful.” But I can see how he might seem runny and vanilla.
I loved Dan Aykroyd as Gus Trenor. Anyone else?
@Jen M–I didn’t think I would, but yeah. Although I did expect him to yell “Don’t cross the streams!” at Lily.
I love HoM, and I think I might be the only one to love Ethan Frome too. (My American lit professor was kind of cracked about Freud, but I will maintain that the pickle dish is NOT any kind of phallic symbol, since the term “pickle” in Wharton’s day was at least as likely to mean a chopped mixture such as we might call a relish as it was a dilled little cucumber. Sorry; next! But I’ll grant I’m likely alone in this opinion. Ahem. ) I still haven’t read Age of Innocence yet. It’s wrong, but I haven’t ever been able to get past Ryder’s performance in the movie, which somehow manages, against all likelihood, to be both soporific and shrill.
And, LaB, “she sabotages herself with athletic vigor, repeatedly” is a perfect description of Lily’s behaviour. (It’s almost as nifty as “Shyamalans herself in the foot.”)
I loved GA in the movie version of HoM, and I kind of loved Eric Stoltz as Selden, too, as infuriatingly dense as Selden is. The cast worked against my expectations, or preconceptions, in a lot of ways, Aykroyd included.
“Although I did expect him to yell ‘Don’t cross the streams!’ at Lily.”
One of these days, that Jaybird’ll teach me not to catch up on the ‘Nation at work: no one else makes me laugh/snort quite so uproariously.
Sandman is right … pickle dishes were used for holding relishes, nuts, and various other foods, but NOT big whole pickles. So evil fizz’ complaint that the pickle dish metaphor is heavy-handed is actually heavy-handed, not every reference to “pickle”, “banana”, “rocket”, or any other such item necessarily represents a penis. Pickle dish is about as phallic as banana cream pie.
I’m not buying that the pickle dish was representative of Zeena’s virginity, either. I think it’s far more complicated than that. So once again, complaints that Wharton’s metaphor is simplistic or obvious are more indicative of the person making the complaint.
I thought Ethan Frome was engrossing and brilliant when I first read it as a junior in college, even though at that time I didn’t have the maturity to fully understand the story. Now that I have a better understanding I find it even more brilliant.