| | 368 | Author: | Wharton review: Hooker, Brian | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "Artemis to Actaeon," from "Some Springtime Verse."  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The title-poem of Mrs. Wharton's Artemis to Actaeon
takes a very different but equally modern view of the same goddess
[as Mr. Hewlett's]. Her Artemis slays Actaeon not in anger, but in
grace, recognising in him who dared to look upon her a soul too
great for the little uses of the world, worthy of that immortality
which is death. Now, there are two ways of handling mythological
material: one may simply retell the old stories vividly, for the
sheer beauty that is in them; or one may seek out some latent
meaning, some new idea whereof the myth will form a fitting
incarnation. The trouble with these present examples of the second
method is that they do violence to the spirit of the myth. The
vigorous and original mentality which has done so much for Mrs.
Wharton as a novelist stands somewhat in her light as a poet. It
is not that a poem can be too intellectual, but that it must not be
more intellectual than emotional; and Mrs. Wharton's thought
sometimes absorbs her feeling and leaves her language dry.
Orpheus the Harper, coming to the gate
Where the implacable dim warder sate,
Besought for parley with a shade within,
Dearer to him than life itself had been,
Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea . . .
Compare with this the opening of Mr. Stephen Phillips's "Christ in
Hades":
Keen as a blinded man at dawn awake
Smells in the dark the cold odor of earth—
Eastward he turns his eyes, and over him
A dreadful freshness exquisitely breathes—
This is the magic; the other is only well written; thought, not
felt. But the most of Mrs. Wharton's book is far better. It is a
delight to follow the steady and sonorous lines of her blank verse
and to note how thoroughly she has assimilated the craftsmanship of
her models. Tennyson and Mr. Phillips have given her style,
Browning has taught her monologue and Rossetti sonnet-form; yet
there is not an imitative line in her book. She has made her
learning her own; and there is far more personality in her poems
than in Mr. Hewlett's. "Margaret of Cortona" is perhaps the best
of them. In her girlhood a man took Margaret out of the slums,
made her a woman and wise. He dying, she took the veil, and in
time became a saint; and the poem is her confession.
Judge Thou alone between this priest and me;
Nay, rather, Lord, between my past and present,
Thy Margaret and that other's—whose she is
By right of salvage—and whose call should follow
Thine? Silent still— Or his who stooped to her,
And drew her to Thee by the bands of love?
Not Thine? Then his?
Ah, Christ—the thorn-crowned Head
Bends . . . bends again . . . down on your knees, Fra Paolo!
If his, then Thine!
Kneel, priest, for this is heaven . . .
Mrs. Wharton is at her best in the dramatic monologue, both because
of her power of characterisation and because blank verse is her
readiest medium. Rhyme often troubles her; and some of her
sonnets, though well versified, are abstract and confused in
expression. She was not born a poet; but this volume shows well
how high in poetry a thoroughly cultured prose artist may attain.
It is a noble and worthy piece of work, of which at least no living
poet need be ashamed. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 369 | Author: | Wharton review: Cooper, Frederic Taber | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "Custom of the Country," in: "The Sense of Personality and Some Recent Novels. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Three husbands seem to be the customary allowance granted by
novelists to the pushing, climbing, heartless type of American
woman, who will sacrifice everything to her social ambitions and
insatiable love of pleasure. Three husbands, it will be
remembered, were given by Robert Grant to Selma White, the heroine
of Unleavened Bread; three also by Winston Churchill to the
heroine
of A Modern Chronicle; and similarly, Mrs.
Wharton is equally generous to Undine Spragg, the central figure of
her latest volume, The Custom of the Country. It is a
brilliantly cynical picture of feminine ruthlessness, and a
fundamental inability to conceive of father, mother, friends and
husbands having been created for any other purpose than to gratify
every passing whim of this one beautiful and utterly spoiled young
woman. Mrs. Wharton has painted Undine Spragg with an unsparing
mercilessness that almost makes the reader wince. It is a splendid
and memorable piece of work, a portrait to form a worthy contrast
to the equally unforgettable one of Lily Bart. But there is little
object in analysing in detail the separate episodes which make Miss
Spragg successively Mrs. Ralph Marvell, the Marquise de Chelles,
and Mrs. Elmer Moffatt. They are of a nature that cannot be
adequately conveyed at second hand; it is not what happens that
matters, it is the play of human motives and human limitations
behind the happenings that makes this volume one of Mrs. Wharton's
finest achievements. And the final touch of the closing paragraph
is a perfect climax, a crowning touch of comprehension of
monumental and perennial dissatisfaction: | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 370 | Author: | Wharton review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Decoration of Houses. By Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | One opens a new book on decoration with a weary anticipation,
remembering how much has been lately written on the subject for
Americans, and to how little purpose; but now the whole style and
practice of decoration has changed, and the teaching of the last
generation has become obsolete. 'The Decoration of Houses,' a
handsome, interesting, and well-written book, not only is an
example of the recent reversion to quasi-classic styles and
methods, but signalizes the complete reaction that has thrown to
the winds, even before the public discovered it, perhaps, the
lately accepted doctrine of constructive virtue, sincerity, and the
beauty of use. The authors take the new ground uncompromisingly,
snap their fingers at sincerity, have no horror of shams, and stand
simply on proportion, harmony of lines, and other architectural
qualities. "Any trompe-d'oeil is permissible in decorative
design," they say, "if it gives an impression of pleasure." To
this have we already come; yet it seems not to have produced
harmony between the outside and the inside of their volume. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 371 | Author: | Wharton review: Cooper, Frederic Taber | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "Ethan Frome." In: The Bigger Issues and Some Recent Books. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It is hard to forgive Mrs. Wharton for the utter
remorselessness of her latest volume, Ethan Frome, for
nowhere has she done anything more hopelessly, endlessly grey with
blank despair. Ethan Frome is a man whose ambitions long ago
burned themselves out. He early spent his vitality in the daily
struggle of winning a bare sustenance from the grudging soil of a
small New England farm. An invalid wife, whose imaginary ailments
thrived on patent medicines, doubled his burden. And then, one
day, a pretty young cousin, left destitute, came to live on the
farm, and brought a breath of fragrance and gladness into the
gloom. Neither Ethan nor the cousin meant to do wrong; it was
simply one of those unconscious, inevitable attachments, almost
primitive in its intensity. It never was even put into words,
until the day when Ethan's wife, perhaps because of a smouldering
jealousy, perhaps because the motive she gave was the true one,
namely that the girl was shiftless and incompetent, sent her out
into the world to shift for herself. It is while driving her over
to the railway station that Ethan consents to the girl's wish that
just once more he will take her coasting down a long hill, that is
a favourite coasting place throughout the neighbourhood. It is a
long, steep, breathless rush, with a giant tree towering up near
the foot, to be dexterously avoided at the last moment. It is
while he holds the girl close to him on the sled, that a ghastly
temptation comes to Ethan, and he voices it: How much easier,
instead of letting her go away, to face unknown struggles, while he
remained behind, eating his heart out with loneliness—how much
easier merely to forget to steer! One shock of impact, and the end
would come. And to this the girl consents. And neither of them
foresees that not even the most carefully planned death is
inevitable, and that fate is about to play upon them one of its
grimmest tricks, and doom them to a life-long punishment, she with
a broken back, he with a warped and twisted frame, tied beyond
escape to the slow starvation of the barren farm, and grudgingly
watched over by the invalid wife, scarcely more alive than
themselves. Art for art's sake is the one justification of a piece
of work as perfect in technique as it is relentless in substance. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 372 | Author: | Wharton review: Marsh, Edward Clark | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Mrs. Wharton's "The Fruit of the Tree"
In: Seven Books of the Month. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It is one of the penalties of so striking a success as Mrs.
Wharton achieved in The House of Mirth that for a long time
to come all her work must endure the comparative judgment. The
first question asked concerning The Fruit of the Tree will
pertain neither to its proper merits nor its formal classification.
"Is it as good as The House of Mirth?"—that is the query
that must be met at the outset, unless it is anticipated by the no
less pressing interrogation, "Will it be as popular as The House
of Mirth?" The implied distinction must be maintained. Those
shallow-pated readers who identify merit with popularity are not to
be found in the intellectual circles to which Mrs. Wharton
ministers. Rather is her most numerous following among those who
forgive the popularity for the sake of the merit. But since the
dual question is sure to be propounded, and the dilemma cannot be
avoided by even the humblest commentator, I may at once lay a
reckless hand on either horn by hazarding the opinion that
The Fruit of the Tree, though a better book
than its predecessor, is not likely to provoke an equal amount of
that heated and emotional public discussion which is the true sign
of popularity. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 373 | Author: | Wharton review: Moss, Mary | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Mrs. Wharton's "Madame de Treymes" | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Since such crude early attempts as Theodore Fay's preposterous
Norman Leslie deserve scant consideration, Mr. Henry James
may safely claim to have discovered the international episode as a
motive for American fiction. In spite of many competitors, he has
hitherto kept an easy supremacy in this field, with such
masterpieces as Daisy Miller, The American, The Princess
Casamassima, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, not to mention
a host of short stories. But among this brilliant company, Mrs.
Wharton's Madame de Treymes must instantly take undisputed
place. In fact, the author fairly challenges comparison by
choosing a theme almost identical with that of The American—
the clash between a spirited outsider and the intangible
resistance of Old World traditions and standards. And to be frank,
her latest story excels Mr. James's early one in the matter of
probability. For my part I have never been quite satisfied that a
man of Newman's imaginative force would not have broken through the
network of obstacles, if only by not appreciating them, and have
ended by carrying off the object of his homage. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 374 | Author: | Wharton review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A Motor Flight through France. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It is not to be expected that Mrs. Wharton would write the
ordinary book of travel—nor has she done so in the present
volume. «The motor-car has restored the romance of travel,» she
declares: and to prove her contention she whirls her reader through
the towns and picturesque country scenes of France on a motor-car
that certainly leaves nothing to be desired by the traveler in the
way of comfort and convenience. Mrs. Wharton dwells with delight
on the freedom from the «ugliness and desolation created by the
railway,» as enjoyed by the motorist, and describes in her usual
charming style the various objects of beauty and interest that
flash by her car without being marred by intervening railroad
yards, smoke, and general dulness. With no country is Mrs. Wharton
more thoroughly familiar than with France, and her brilliant
sketches of towns, castles, churches, men, and women, seen in
passing, furnish excellent reading and lend to this book a piquancy
not usually possest by others of its kind. For any one
contemplating a motor trip through France it should serve,
moreover, as an excellent guide. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 375 | Author: | Wharton review: Boynton, H. W. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Some Stories of the Month | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Her [Miss Wilkins] own New England, the scene of the early
tales, is an affair of black and white, of strong crude forces and
repressions. Such is the New England of Mrs. Wharton in Ethan
Frome and Summer. But while Miss Wilkins's voice had
always a certain raw tang of the native, altogether lacked grace
and flexibility, was the voice of rustic New England, Mrs.
Wharton has had the task of subduing her rich and varied and
worldly instrument to its provincial theme. She has succeeded;
Summer shows all the virtue of her style and none of its
weakness. Here is no routine
elegance, no languor of
disillusion, no bite of deliberate satire. As in Ethan
Frome, this writer who has come perilously near being the idol
of snobs shows herself as an interpreter of life in its elements,
stripped of the habits and inhibitions of the polite world. The
story lacks the tragic completeness of the earlier one, has indeed
a species of happy ending,—an ending, at worst, of pathos not
without hope. The scene is the New England village of North
Dormer, once as good as its neighbours, but now deserted and
decaying in its corner among the hills. It is vignetted in a few
sentences at the beginning: « little wind moved among the round
white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows
across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of
street when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high
and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected
New England villages. The clump of weeping willows about the duck
pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast
almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and
the point where, at the other end of the village, the road rises
above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosing the
cemetery.» The Hatchards are the great people of the place, with
an elderly spinster still solvent and in residence, and a Memorial
Library bearing musty witness to that distinguished and now
extinguished author, Honorius Hatchard, who had hobnobbed with
Irving and Halleck, back in the forties. Another old family are
the Royalls. Their present representative is the middle-aged
lawyer who, after showing promise elsewhere, has returned to North
Dormer while still a young man, for the apparent purpose of going
to seed there at his leisure. Above the village, though at
distance—fastness of a strange community of outlaws and
degenerates—towers the craggy mountain from which, years back,
Lawyer Royall has rescued a child. As Charity Royall she grows up
in his household, and after his wife's death becomes its
unchallenged ruler. Her little liking for Royall himself he has
destroyed by making, in his «lonesomeness,» a single false step
toward her. Her own lonely lot in unyouthful North Dormer is
lightened only by the vague dreams of girlhood. Then the fairy
prince comes in the person of a young architect from the city whom
certain local relics of fine building have attracted to the
neighbourhood, and whom a swift romance with the girl Charity holds
there. She becomes his mistress, he deserts her in her «trouble,»
she turns desperately to the haunt of her people, «the Mountain»;
and is rescued for a second time and finally by Lawyer Royall. In
her marriage with the aging man whom she has scorned there is, we
really believe, some chance of happiness, or at least content.
Young love is dead, but old love is ready to creep into its place.
Mrs. Wharton has often been accused of bitterness; let her critics
note that the whole effect of this powerful story hangs upon our
recognition of the power of simple human goodness—not
«virtuousness,» but faithful, unselfish devotion of one sort or
another—to make life worth living. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 376 | Author: | Wharton review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A Few Thought-Compelling Novels. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It is possible to write about the «smart set» and not be
sophomoric or flippant. Edith Wharton does this, and her new
novel, «The Reef» (Appletons), is a serious and important criticism
of the aimless existence of the idle rich. Her criticism,
however, is made subtly; it is a matter not of statement but of
suggestion. George Darrow, a diplomatist, drifts into a foolish
intrigue with Sophy Viner, a commonplace little person who has been
making a dreary living as a companion to a vulgar woman of wealth.
After a Parisian sojourn they separate, and when next he meets her,
after three years, she is acting as governess to the little
daughter of Anna Leath, a widow whom he is courting. This is
embarrassing enough, but worse is in store. Sophy, he finds, is
affianced to Owen Leath, Mrs. Leath's stepson. There is something
reminiscent of Pinero in Mrs. Wharton's method of juggling these
troubled souls. «The Reef» could be made into an admirable drama.
The plot comes to its climax naturally, in the manner of life, with
that irony which is characteristic of the way of the gods with
foolish people. For Mrs. Wharton's people are foolish—they are
vain, selfish and flatly materialistic. She has knowledge of but
not love for mankind. Perhaps it is fairer to say that she has no
love for the class of which she writes with such cruel realism. It
is certain that the future historian who wishes a clear idea of the
thoughts and actions of the most worthless people of this
generation will need but two books—«The House of Mirth» and «The
Reef.» | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 378 | Author: | Wharton review: Boynton, H. W. | Requires cookie* | | | 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 |
| 379 | Author: | Wharton review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Ethan Frome | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | More than ten years ago Mrs. Wharton published a short story
called «The Duchess at Prayer.» Since that time we have cherished
an estimate of her powers which no intermediate accession to her
repertory has raised, nor even, to speak truth, quite justified.
Practised, cosmopolitan, subtle, she has seemed, on the whole, to
covet most earnestly the refinements of Henry James. In spite of
her habit of a franker approach, her consistent rating of matter
above manner, and the gravitation — we should hesitate to say
transfer — of her interest from exotic to native themes; we might
have been reasonably content to rank her as the greatest pupil of
a little master, were it not for the appearance of «Ethan Frome.»
This startling fulfilment recalls not only the promise of the early
story, but its revelation of a more potent influence — the
inspiriting example of a greater novelist to whom Mr. James's
devoirs have been paid in the phrase, «The master of us
all.» Exactly how much the inception and execution of «The Duchess
at Prayer» owed to Balzac's «La grande Breteche» is beyond our
present point, which is, specifically, that the excellence of Mrs.
Wharton's work in this case outstripped the charge of imitation,
and allied her with that company of splendid talents whom neither
magnificence nor the catastrophes of passion can abash. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 380 | Author: | Wharton review: Franklin, C. L. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Women and Business | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Mrs. Wharton's The House of Mirth is
a splendid study of social conditions; but, as the reviewers have
pointed out, it leaves us somewhat cold as to the fortunes of Lily
Bart (very largely, I conceive, owing to the extreme unpleasantness
of her name), and hence we shall not be shocking its readers too
much if we discuss in cold blood certain financial matters which
come up near the end of the book. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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