University of Virginia Library

MRS. WHARTON'S "THE FRUIT OF THE TREE"*

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.

And so enough of the grocer's quantitative method of weighing genius. It is more gratifying to declare Mrs. Wharton's new book a novel that richly repays reading, without reference to intrusive comparisons. To the reader of much fiction of the day, and even more perhaps to the craftsman, its craftsmanship must be a delight. It is not merely that the author knows how to write, though even this faculty, which ought to be taken for granted, is sufficiently rare. She knows also how to manage and develop a story. Her skill in this province of her art is all the more striking because her latest work is frankly disdainful of certain traditional precepts. It lacks unity. Its point of view is not single. It does not flow evenly, but leaps over years in a paragraph and halts for pages over a momentary incident. It takes in different groups of personages whose relations are shifting and varied, and the main interest is more than once transferred from one character to another.

These facts might well excite the academic person who reads by rule. But it should be remembered that Mrs. Wharton has established her right to ignore rules by first proving how faithfully she can observe them. The perfectly direct development of Lily Bart's career, though it was empty of the dramatic element, was structurally an almost faultless narrative. In The Fruit of the Tree the problem is, if not actually bigger, at least vastly more complex—or, rather, there are two or three distinct though related problems dealt with. It is not altogether discreditable to Mrs. Wharton that she has attempted a more difficult task, and the only valid test of her success or failure is the concrete one—the impression produced by an honest reading of the book. The truth is that the structure of the story is for the most part managed with admirable skill. The transitions are effected so easily that there is no jar, and the point of view throughout is large enough to allow for some variation without forcing a consciousness of the change. Only the shifting of attention from one to another of the principal characters, resulting in a lessening of the grip of the story, must be recorded as a positive fault. The stage is set in the beginning around the figure of John Amherst, at first a worker in the Westmore mills and eventually their virtual owner, and it is his relation to the mills that furnishes the semblance of a unifying interest. But the personal problem springing from this relationship falls into abeyance for a time as the character of his first wife emerges into the light, and it drops nearly out of sight before the more poignant demand of the situation which develops toward the end around the woman who becomes his second wife. Hers is the real drama, for which all that goes before is mere preparation. And the preparation goes back too far, is too thorough; the length of the approach dwarfs the edifice.

But I have dwelt too long on purely formal considerations. Mrs. Wharton's highly polished style and mastery of her craft imply at least that the stuff she has put into her book is worthy of some attention. But when one comes to examine the story itself and the ideas that lie back of it some very large questions obtrude themselves. Here the backward view with its comparison is inevitable again. No one who has followed this author's career attentively can have failed to note that The House of Mirth betrayed a decided change of front; and the terms in which this change is characterised are likely to involve one's view of the whole province of fiction. In her earlier work, and particularly in the best of it as contained in certain of her short stories, Mrs. Wharton showed herself the cultivator of a highly specialised field. The problems with which she dealt were subtle ones, and her characters were tinged with the morbid excess of sensibility which seems to us to belong to modern life. It was not for nothing that she was proclaimed the faithful disciple of Mr. Henry James. Perhaps the persistent attribution of this discipleship stung her to seek escape into a different field. Whatever the reason, the marks of her former master's influence have almost wholly disappeared in her later

work; for her recent book, Madame de Treymes, though reminiscent of Mr. James as to subject, is scarcely so as to treatment. In The Fruit of the Tree there is elaboration of plot, but little of the complexity that springs from the interaction of highly individualised characters. The persons of the drama are indeed somewhat conventionalised into the guise of "types," and the situation into which they are finally plunged provokes a reference to literature rather than to life. Ingeniously, plausibly as the climax is developed, it is possible to feel that it is a wonderfully clever invention, not an organic growth.

All this the contemner of popularity may explain by asserting that Mrs. Wharton's inspiration has dwindled as her technical mastery has increased. On the other hand, it may be declared that she has sought a universal note in place of the limited appeal of her earlier work; and the advocate of this view can at least have the satisfaction of pointing triumphantly to the fact that she now has twenty readers where she formerly had one. For the reader who is honestly in doubt as between these two extremes of opinion there is no course open but to fall back on the heartiest praise of Mrs. Wharton's fine and exceptional gift, and the liveliest curiosity as to what pleasure it may still have in store for us.