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1Author:  Wharton review: Sedgwick, Henry Dwight.Add
 Title:  The Novels of Mrs. Wharton  
 Published:  1995 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text 
 Description: WHEN Mrs. Wharton's stories first appeared, in that early period which, as we have now learned, was merely a period of apprenticeship, everybody said, "How clever!" "How wonderfully clever!" And the criticism—to adopt a generic term for indiscriminate adjectives—was apt, for the most conspicuous trait in the stories was cleverness. They were astonishingly clever; and their cleverness, as an ostensible quality will, caught and held the attention. And yet, though undoubtedly correct, the term owes its correctness, in part at least, to its ready-to-wear quality, to its negative merit of vague amplitude, behind which the most diverse gifts and capacities may lie concealed. No readers of Mrs. Wharton, after the first shock of bewildered admiration, rest content with it, but grope about to lift the cloaking surtout of cleverness and to see as best they may how and by what methods her preternaturally nimble wits are playing their game,—for it is a game that Mrs. Wharton plays, pitting herself against a situation to see how much she can score.
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