| | 1 | Author: | Wharton review: Boynton, H. W. | Add | | | Title: | Mrs. Wharton's Manner  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Mrs. Wharton's early successes as a writer of short stories
were not the chance successes of a tyro. She had already served
her apprenticeship, without making the public pay for the crude
products of that trying phase of experience. She had learned what
she wanted to do, and how to do it. She could take a situation or
an episode involving two or three human figures, and wring the
truth from it—the truth as she personally saw it. She could drive
home her interpretation with witty phrase and epigram. She could
make people «sit up,» without the use of vulgar stimulants. If
there was one quality which pleased her audience more than her
brilliancy, it was her breeding. A final zest was given to the
enjoyment of her style by the sense that it was gentlemanlike.
That sense was misleading, of course, for she has always been
strongly feminine; but it is possible for a voice a trifle deeper
than common, a gesture somewhat more frank, to enhance the charm of
femininity by its hint of contradiction. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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