| | 1 | 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 |
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