Archives for 2014

The Reckoning

June 6, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Reckoning first appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, New York, 1902. The story was subsequently included in Edith Wharton’s collection of short fiction, The Descent of Man and Other Stories published by Charles Scribner’s in 1904. It is one of the many stories she wrote which featured the ‘new ethics’ emerging from the relaxation of the divorce laws in the United States.

The Reckoning- critical commentary

This is an amazingly mature work for the relatively young Edith Wharton, and proof positive that she was thinking critically about the issues of personal liberty within marriage, the grounds for divorce, and the possible consequences of sexual liberty, long before her own affair with Morton Fullerton in 1908 and her eventual divorce from her husband Teddy Wharton in 1912.

In tone, subject, and style the story represents a transition between the nineteenth and the twentieth century tradition of short stories. It has the understated world weariness of Maupassant and Chekhov, and the incisive, critical realism which was to come in the same decade from James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

Stucture

The story is very elegantly structured in three well balanced sections. The first introduces the Westall’s, their pact of individual liberty within marriage, and Julia’s first doubts when she sees her husband’s interest in a younger woman.

The second section provides a flashback to Julia’s first marriage to John Armant, in which she felt trapped by a relationship that to her had become stale. This explains the origins of her agreement with Clement that an individual must have the right to move on when the time comes. But now in the present, after ten years marriage to Clement, she feels threatened by the very agreement she has helped to generate between them.

The third section represents the lessons she learns. Feeling sure that Clement is leaving her for Una Van Sidern, she returns to her former home and realises that when she left her former husband John Arment, she took no account of his feelings at the time. He confirms that he was an unwilling participant in the divorce – but he forgives her in retrospect.

The Reckoning – study resources

The New York Stories – New York Review Books – Amazon UK

The New York Stories – New York Review Books – Amazon US

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Descent of Man and Other Stories – Project Gutenberg

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Reckoning – story synopsis

Part I. Clement Westall has been speaking on radical proposals for personal freedom within marriage to a gathering of New York socialites at the Saturday salon of the Van Siderns. His wife Julia previously shared his views but now feels uneasy about their being made known in public – especially when they are enthusiastically embraced by the twenty-six year old Una Van Sidern, to whom her husband admits being attracted.

Part II. Julia felt trapped in her first marriage to John Armant, and she married Clement Westall on the understanding that individuals should be free to move on by mutual consent when they felt the marriage had served its useful purpose. But after ten years of marriage to Westall she has come to believe that these ideas no longer apply in her own case. So when he plans to go ahead with another speech at the Van Siderns she asks him not to go. He asserts their old agreement to move on when they wish to form a new relationship.

Part III. When he leaves to join the Van Siderns she feels her whole world collapse, as if she had been caught out by a new rule of her own making. She wanders about New York all day, uncertain what to do with her tumultuous emotions. Finally she ends up at her old home where her first husband still lives. She explains to him that Clement Westall is about to leave her for a younger woman, which has forced her to realise that when one person wishes to leave a marriage, the other may not, and may not understand the need for separation. She realises that this might have been the situation when she divorced John Armant, which he confirms to have been the case. She asks his forgiveness – which he grants her.

Principal characters

Clement Westall	a New York lawyer and socialite
Julia Westall	his wife
John Armant	Julia’s first husband
Una Van Sidern	a 26 year old socialite

Edith Wharton’s 42-room house – The Mount

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
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Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Short Stories of Edith Wharton
This is an old-fashioned but excellently detailed site listing the publication details of all Edith Wharton’s eighty-six short stories – with links to digital versions available free on line.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

The Rescue

October 23, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Rescue was first published by J.M.Dent & Sons in 1920. It forms one part of The Lingard Trilogy, of which the other two are Conrad’s first novels, Almayer’s Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896). All of them feature Tom Lingard, an independent and adventurous sea captain. Although it was the last in the series to be published, The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows deals with events which pre-date the earlier stories. The sequence is what might be called a ‘trilogy in reverse’. Conrad began writing the novel in 1897, but a year later put it to one side, uncertain how to continue the narrative. He took up the work again twenty years later in 1918.

first edition – J.M.Dent & Sons 1920

The Rescue – critical commentary

The strengths

It is strange that after the tremendous achievements of his ‘middle period’ — from Lord Jim and Nostromo to Under Western Eyes — Conrad should fall back into the sub-standard ‘adventure story’ pattern of Almayer’s Folly and An Outcast of the Islands – although The Rescue is entirely consistent with the other two parts of the ‘Lingard Trilogy’ in being over-long, politically confusing, and full of clumsy, unconvincing plot devices.

The main strengths of the novel are in the characterisation of the central figure captain Tom Lingard, and the powerful but doomed romantic liaison he forms with Edith Travers. Lingard is of course something of a stock figure of boy’s adventure stories – the tough, fearless, and heroically moral character who is limited only by his lack of sophistication.

Lingard left his Devonshire roots when still a teenager and has lived as a seaman and an ‘adventurer’, eventually building up the capital to buy his beloved brig, the Lightning. But his roving bachelor life has not prepared him to cope with the experience he undergoes when the Lightning meets the Hermit.

When Lingard comes into contact with the beautiful Edith Travers, he cannot understand his own feelings or his reaction to her. It is Conrad’s triumph to present a narrative in which Lingard cannot understand why he wants to look at and talk to this seemingly remote women – when it is quite obvious to the reader that he is falling in love with her. He does not have the emotional vocabulary to deal with the experience.

She is in a similar position – having immured herself in a carapace of unfeeling rectitude as a response to her loveless marriage to Martin Travers. She takes a critical, distant attitude to everyone (except d’Alcacer) but feels herself melting before the power of Lingard’s emotional honesty, his frankness, and his positive attitude to life.

She tries to control her own reactions, but realises that he represents an elemental life force. The two would-be lovers also trust and understand each other at a level which does not need articulation and cannot be explained to outsiders. This is a very romantic notion – which is intensified since the relationship is unconsummated and doomed to failure.

The weaknesses

The Rescue has many of the story elements of his earlier novels. These include the fearless and upright young seaman; the friendship with a native prince; the relationship with a native girl; the setting of the Malay Archipelago; and lots of named characters who have no real significance in the story. But apart from the relationship between Lingard and Mrs Travers (discussed above) Conrad does not explore any new themes with these subjects.

There are a number of other irritating weaknesses in the novel. Despite all the lengthy and elaborate scene-setting, topographical description, and atmosphere-creation, it’s very hard to conceptualise the events and where they are taking place. The same is true of the rival native factions who are fighting for power. We are not provided with any persuasive reasons why they are in conflict with each other; they are difficult to tell apart; and they are simply not so convincing as his European characters. (It has to be said that the same is true of the two other novels in this trilogy, Almayer’s Folly and An Outcast of the Islands.)

At a very trivial level – but surprisingly for one so technically conscious of maritime issues as Conrad – the Travers run aground sailing in what he describes as a yacht. It continues to be described as a yacht for almost the entire novel – but then in the last few pages is suddenly referred to as a schooner. Now whilst it is true that a schooner may serve as a yacht (‘a recreational ship’) he also just as suddenly gives it a name – the Hermit. This has the unfortunate effect of suggesting that he was not he was not concentrating or had not fully conceptualised the materials of the book

Narrative chronology

Conrad is famous for the manner in which he radically re-organised the chronology of events in his narratives. In Lord Jim for instance the crucial initiating episode when Jim (and the rest of the crew) abandon the Patna is not described in detail at the start of the tale where it belongs: it is constructed retrospectively from a number of different sources as the novel progresses – that is, as a series of flash backs. The technical term for this device is analepsis.

Very often this strategy can intensify dramatic tension in the story, or it can be used to withhold information from the reader so as to create mystery or a ‘double perspective’ in which an event already encountered needs to be seen in a different light. Conrad also uses this device quite frequently to create dramatic irony.

Sometimes he uses the opposite device – prolepsis, or the flash forward. At some point in the story we are told what happens later, and are left wondering what happened in the ‘gap’, the connection between the two parts, or how the later even came about.

But it has to be said that the reasons for using these devices are not always made plain or are simply not convincing. The Rescue contains just such a case in point. The most unnecessary flash forward occurs at the end of Part IV in which considerable time and effort has been expended to build up dramatic tension describing Lingard’s attempt to rescue the two men (d’Alcacer and Travers) who have been captured by the local natives.

Yet for no discernible reason, Part V begins with the two men safely back on board the Emma, and the explanation of how Lingard negotiated their release is delayed until much later. Dramatic tension is thrown away with no dramatic gain.

Narrative chain

Conrad is also fond of constructing his narratives from a number of different sources or narrators. In The Rescue he chooses an omnipotent third person narrative mode – with no outer narrator such as Marlow who recounts much of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. But he still chooses a number of different sources by having characters such as Jaffir (the messenger) transmit lengthy accounts of events which have happened elsewhere to another character (Lingard).

Because events are happening in a number of different locations, Conrad also resorts to the clumsy and fairly unconvincing device of people writing long letters to each other – even though the two principal locations (the brig and the yacht) are positioned quite close to each other. The letters are doubly unpersuasive since they are written in the form of dramatic fictional narratives rather than personal correspondence, and they are clearly Conrad continuing his account of events under another guise.

The Rescue – study resources

The Rescue – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

The Rescue – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

The Rescue – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Rescue – plot summary

Part I. The Man and the Brig

Young Tom Lingard is the owner and captain of a sailing ship, the Lightning which lies becalmed at night, somewhere in the Malayan archipelago. With his chief mate Shaw he discusses the problems that women can cause. Suddenly they are approached by a search party in a boat seeking help for a yacht which has become stranded on mudflats on a nearby island.

Carter, the commander of the boat is interrogated in rather a hostile and suspicious manner which leaves him puzzled, but his boat is put in tow. When they reach the island Lingard handles his brig skillfully, but it transpires that he was heading for the island himself. He fires a warning shot into the interior, then joins the stricken yacht.

Part II. The Shore of Refuge

The story backtracks to explain how Lingard first came into contact with the Wajo leader Hassim, and their instant bond of friendship. Lingard goes to visit Hassim, but is warned off by Jaffir, who reports that Hassim is now a fugitive in a civil war. But Lingard takes a long boat on shore to rescue him, and the sortie is a success.

Lingard begins trading in arms and saving money to help Hassim in the re-conquest of Wajo. He is followed around by Jorgenson, an old sea-captain whose life has been ruined. When Lingard explains his plans to Jorgenson, the older man warns him against taking action, and offers his own life as an example of failure. But in the end, with no future prospects, he agrees to join in the venture, along with his prematurely aged native wife.

Lingard has previously visited local chief Belarab to ask for help, and offers him guns in exchange for manpower. Lingard feels that since he has saved Hassim’s life, he is tied to him in some mysterious way. He buys the old schooner Emma and runs it aground close to Belarab to use as a weapons store, placing Jorgenson in charge.

Part III. The Capture

When Lingard arrives on the stricken yacht he is met with hostility from its owner Mr Travers, who thinks he is a vulgar adventurer, intent on profiting from salvaging the yacht. Lingard sees the yacht and its passengers as merely annoying obstacles who have come between him and his plans.

The passenger d’Alcacer is in flight from Europe following the early death of his wife and is friendly with the owner’s enigmatic wife Edith Travers. Whilst Lingard and Travers trade insults with each other, d’Alcacer takes an instant liking to Lingard and tries to mediate. But the dispute is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Hassim and his sister Immada.

Mrs Travers is fascinated by Immada’s attractiveness, but the girl and her brother reproach Lingard for recently neglecting them, and leave with him when the interview comes to a fruitless conclusion.

On her own after dinner on the yacht, Mrs Travers reflects upon the failure of her romantic dreams. Suddenly, Lingard rows up alongside to talk to her, telling her he feels completely detached from his British roots and more at home with the Malaysians.

He wants her to help him by pretending to be frightened on the yacht, so that they will have no alternative but to accept Lingard’s offer to house them on the brig. He tells her the whole background story, which touches her romantic sentiments. She feels existentially elated by his frankness and emotional honesty. She is preparing herself to act on his behalf when she is told that her husband and d’Alcacer have been kidnapped whilst walking along the shore.

Back on the brig, Lingard reads a letter he has received from Jorgenson describing disquiet amongst the natives who want to attack the stranded yacht. The letter warns of a threat from rival local leader Tengga to seize the arms stored on the Emma.

The letter goes on to describe the arrival of Sherif Daman, who also wants the arms for the recapture of Wajo. Lingard receives Carter on board as emissary from the yacht. Carter cannot understand Lingard’s or Mrs Travers’ motivation in the affair. Then chief mate Shaw protests against Lingard’s plans – because he appears to be siding against fellow white men on the yacht.

Part IV. The Gift of the Shallows

Lingard nevertheless goes ahead, and takes Mrs Travers from the yacht onto the brig. He is overawed by her attractiveness and the knowledge that she understands him. He appears to be falling in love with her, but is not aware of it himself. She asks him to rescue d’Alcacer and her husband.

Hassim arrives on the brig with his sister and reports on his visit to the camp where the two prisoners are being held. Lingard decides to recapture the prisoners single-handedly, and he puts Carter in charge of the brig. Immada protests that he is putting himself at risk, whereupon Mrs Travers declares that she will go with him, much to the consternation of Carter, whilst Shaw is outraged at being left with no clear orders.

When Lingard and Mrs Travers reach the Emma Jorgenson is truculent and hostile . Lingard questions Mrs Travers somewhat jealously about d’Alcacer, whilst she in her turn thinks that Lingard is enamoured of Immada, by who they are joined on board with Hassim.

Part V. The Point of Honour and the Point of Passion

Travers has been rescued and Mrs Travers has adopted native dress on board the Emma. Travers delivers an embittered and pompous lecture to his wife, criticising her behaviour. They argue about Lingard, about whom Travers is arrogant and snobbish.

Travers and d’Alcacer have been released temporarily into Lingard’s care. Mrs Travers has had further heart-to-heart conversations with Lingard, and is deeply impressed by his character and his personality. She too appears to be falling in love, but doesn’t want to admit it to herself. She would like to share what she knows about Lingard with d’Alcacer, who she regards as a good friend – but she doesn’t.

The story backtracks to describe Lingard’s arrival at Daman’s stockade to negotiate the temporary release of Travers and d’Alcacer. The manoeuvre is successful because of Lingard’s high prestige in the locality.

On board the Emma Lingard and Mrs Travers exchange confidences about their earlier lives until they are joined by d’Alcacer, who has been observing their growing intimacy. After dinner d’Alcacer quizzes Mrs Travers about Lingard, who he calls ‘the Man of Fate’. They wonder what will happen to them, and d’Alcacer guesses that Lingard will be heart-broken over Mrs Travers. He asks her to give him a sign if she thinks they are about to die.

Lingard calls Mrs Travers into his room where they interrogate each other and verbally admit their mutual attraction. Lingard has received a letter from Carter saying that (with good intentions) he has attacked some of the natives from on board the Lightning – which automatically puts Lingard’s plans into jeopardy.

Lingard has despatched Jaffir to find Hassim and Immada, and Jaffir has suggested that the only solution to the problem will be to return the two prisoners to Daman. Lingard and Mrs Travers agree that this must be done quickly. She gives d’Alcacer the warning signal he has requested.

d’Alcacer braces himself philosophically for what he thinks will be certain death, whilst realising that Mr Travers is ill with some sort of fever. When it is time for them to go, Travers claims that his wife is in the grip of some sort of fashionable craze, but it is he himself who is clearly delirious. After a heated departure from Mrs Travers, Lingard takes the two men on shore to deliver them up.

Part VI. The Claim of Life and the Toll of Death

On board the Emma, Mrs Travers regrets the quarrelsome way she and Lingard parted. Jorgenson meanwhile appears to be making fuses for some sort of explosions. As signs of fighting start up on shore, Mrs Travers wants to join Lingard.

Hassim abandons negotiations with Belarab and is heading back to the Emma when he is intercepted by Tengga’s fighters. Jaffir runs to the ship with Hassim’s ring and reports to Jorgenson. Mrs Travers is then persuaded to take the ring as a signal to Lingard..

Mrs Travers is rowed onto shore and reaches the stockade bearing a torch, where Lingard is there to receive her. Because she distrusts Jorgenson and does not realise the significance of the ring, she does not pass on to Lingard the message it represents.

Lingard, d’Alcacer, and Mrs Travers talk to each other in turn around a fire. The Spaniard is mainly concerned with the possibility of being murdered the next day, whilst Lingard thinks Mrs Travers could not help herself but join him. She accepts his devotion and tells him nothing, so as not to disturb him. Meanwhile an envoy from Tengga fails to persuade Jorgenson to leave the Emma.

Two days later, following an explosion of some kind, Lingard is on the Lightning where Carter relates rescuing Jaffir. Lingard recalls in flashback awakening alongside Mrs Travers and being summoned to see Belarab.

Belarab has been informed through spies of all elements of Daman’s and Tengga’s machinations. In the morning mists there appear to be attacks imminent, but when a flotilla of canoes surrounds the Emma, Jorgenson blows up the ship, whereupon Belarab releases the prisoners.

Jaffir’s story continues with his escape from the Emma. He tells Lingard about the ring, then dies. Lingard takes Carter as mate on the Lightning then invites Mrs Travers by letter to meet him on shore.

Next morning d’Alcacer rows Mrs Travers out where she meets Lingard. She wants to confess about the undelivered ring, but he already knows the truth and tells her it would not have made any difference. She departs, returns to the yacht, and throws the ring into the sea. The yacht and the Lightning depart in opposite directions.

The Rescue – principal characters

Tom Lingard	young captain of the brig Lightning
Shaw	fat first mate on the Lightning
Haji Wasub	boatswain on the Lightning
Carter	young mate on the yacht Hermit
Hassim	nephew of a native chief
Immada	his sister, a princess
Daman	leader of the Illanuns
Jorgenson	experienced but discredited ex-captain
Belarab	local native chief
Martin Travers	arrogant owner of the yacht Hermit
Edith Travers	his beautiful and romantic wife
d’Alcacer	recently widowed former Spanish embassy attache
Tengga	native would-be chief

The Rescue – glossary

brig	large sailing ship used for war or commerce
calash	light carriage with collapsible top
cuddy	a small cabin on a ship
gharry	an eastern horse-drawn carriage
kris	an asymmetrical dagger with a wavy blade
pangeran	the son of a ruler
parang	a big Malayan knife or machete
peon	a low-ranking soldier or worker
prau	long narrow sailing boat
sampan	a flat-bottomed wooden Chinese boat
sarong	large length of fabric wrapped around the waist
serang	the boatswain of a Lascar or East Indian crew

Joseph Conrad – video biography

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales

The Sacred Fount

September 23, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Sacred Fount was first published simultaneously as a single volume by Charles Scribners and Sons in New York and Methuen in London in February 1901. It comes from the ‘late period’ in James’s development as a novelist, and has puzzled readers and critics ever since, because of the obscurity of its subject matter and the extremely complex manner in which the events are related.

On the surface, it is the simple story of a number of people who travel to a weekend party at a country estate (Newmarch). But the narrator of events perceives hidden relations going on between some of the visitors – and he tries to work out the truth of these liaisons by psychological means alone, eschewing what he calls the ignoble methods of “the detective and the keyhole”.

the first English edition 1901

The Sacred Fount – critical commentary

The original idea

When he first began writing The Sacred Fount Henry James thought the narrative would take the form of a short tale – as he did with many of his other novels – most of which became anything other than short. This is how James described what he called the donnée of his tale.

The notion of the young man who marries an older woman and who has the effect on her of making her younger and still younger, while he himself becomes her age. When he reaches the age that she was (on their marriage) she has gone back to the age that he was.

Mightn’t this be altered (perhaps) to the idea of cleverness and stupidity? A clever woman marries a deadly dull man, and loses and loses her wit as he shows more and more.

Both of these ideas are incorporated into the novel. The Narrator thinks Guy Brissenden’s vital juices are being drained by May Server or Lady John, leaving him looking much older than his twenty-nine years. They on the other hand appear much younger and more vivacious than their middle-age would suggest.

Gilbert Long on the other hand has always been something of a nonentity and dolt, but has suddenly developed intelligence and wit – as a result (it is supposed) of his secret sexual relationship with a clever woman. The Narrator spends the next three hundred pages trying to uncover the identity of this women.

‘The Sacred Fount’ as a concept is the source of youth at which older people are refreshing themselves – draining vital fluids from their younger partners. It is easy enough to spot here the notion of vampyrism which has influenced a lot of critical comment on the novel – the older person feeding off the life forces of someone younger, or the same thing in intellectual terms.

Problems of interpretation

The main problem with this as the plot for the novel is the reader is at no point presented with any impartial evidence or dramatised interchanges between the characters on which to form an independent judgement about such matters.

If fact one of the major weaknesses associated with the novel is the lack of characterisation. People are named perhaps given an age – and that’s it. There is no way a reader can form a picture or make any distinction between Grace Brissenden or May Server. They are both either ‘very beautiful’ or look younger than they did previously. Similarly, the men are merely names – Gilbert Long, Guy Brissenden, and Ford Obert. Who might be relating to whom is left unrecorded – except in the Narrator’s overheated imagination.

Not only are the characters not developed as fictional constructs, but everything in the narrative is mediated by the un-named, first-person Narrator. He tells us about the appearance and the interchanges between the other characters – so at a very simple, technical level, we only have his opinion or his interpretation of events.

But more than this, it rapidly becomes apparent that he is one of James’s unreliable narrators – not unlike the Governess in The Turn of the Screw (1898) written three years earlier.

The other characters do not see or do not agree with his observations. He actually imagines, invents, and ‘constructs’ other people’s conversations – thinking what the might or could be saying to each other. But then he draws his analytic conclusions from this evidence that he has constructed himself.

When the Narrator challenges and quizzes people about his suppositions, they give their own account or opinions of events – which turn out to be the exact opposite of what he suspects.

The Narrator is entirely self-congratulatory and vain: he describes himself as having ‘transcendent intelligence’ and ‘superior vision’ – yet the fact is that nobody else agrees with claims he is making, and of course at the end of the novel he turns out to be wrong.

The Narrator puts all his arguments in the form of elaborate metaphors, obscure allusions, and extravagant figures of speech. His interlocutors repeatedly ask him what he is talking about, and Mrs Brissenden finally tells him she thinks him crazy.

He even tells lies – for instance, claiming to Mrs Brissenden that he has not discussed with other people the issues of the secret liaisons he suspects – when in fact he has discussed them with just about everyone else he meets.

Rebecca West issued one of her wittiest sneers when she wrote that the narrator “spends more intellectual force than Kant can have used on The Critique of Pure Reason in an unsuccessful attempt to discover whether there exists between certain of his fellow-guests a relationship not more interesting among these vacuous people than it is among sparrows.”

Leon Edel described the novel as “a detective story without a crime—and without a detective. The detective, indeed, is the reader.”

The Sacred Fount – study resources

The Sacred Fount – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Sacred Fount – Library of America – Amazon US

The Sacred Fount – Kindle edition

The Sacred Fount – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Sacred Fount – audiobook at Librivox

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James – biographical notes

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

The Sacred Fount – plot summary

Chapter 1. The Narrator travels by train to a country weekend party at Newmarch with Gilbert Long, and Mrs Grace Brissenden, commenting on the changes in their appearance. Mrs Brissenden thinks that the changes to Gilbert Long are the result of his relationship with Lady Jane.

Chapter 2. The Narrator sees Lady Jane with Gilbert Long at Newmarch. He also meets Guy Brissenden, Grace’s much younger husband, and is astonished at how much older he appears – whereas his wife looks much younger. However, when he discusses these changes with Gilbert Long, his friend does not see them at all. The Narrator theorises that the older person in a couple can become younger – but only at the expense of the younger partner becoming older.

Chapter 3. The Narrator discusses his theory with Mrs Brissenden and the case of Gilbert Long and Lady John, where he thinks there he thinks there has been a transfer of intelligence, making him the cleverest guest but one [the cleverest by implication being the Narrator himself]. He suggests that they should search out the biggest fool at the party to discover the source of Long’s improvement – but there must be evidence of relations between them. They make further observations which prove fruitless, and the Narrator entertains the notion that his suppositions might be in bad taste.

Chapter 4. Mrs Server thinks that Lady John is only interested in Ford Obert. The Narrator and May Server discuss a painting of a man holding a mask, guessing of whom it reminds them. The Narrator talks with Ford Obert about his theory, who has similar suspicions of Mrs Server. They agree to limit their observations to psychology alone, yet they recognise that theoretically it’s none of their business which other parties in these presumably illicit relations are creating the effects they claim to be observing.

Chapter 5. The Narrator discusses with Mrs Brissenden their observations regarding Mrs Server. They disagree, and still have no evidence for their claims and no known lover. They go out into the garden and find Mrs Server with Guy Brissenden. His wife claims that he is being used as a red herring by Mrs Server to deflect attention from her real lover.

Chapter 6. The Narrator reflects that whilst Mrs Server keeps appearing with different men, he himself is not one of them. He wonders briefly if he might be in love with her, and if the rest of the company are wondering about her as he is. Next he comes across Lady John and Guy Brissingham in a remote part of the gardens. He imagines their thoughts and intentions regarding each other, and concludes that Lady John is using Guy Brissenden as a red-herring too.

Chapter 7. The Narrator quizzes young Guy Brissenden on Lady John and Mrs Server, but Brissenden contradicts every one of his suppositions. They agree that Mrs Server is very happy, but don’t know why. Guy Brissenden wants to ‘help’ Mrs Server, and thinks she might be hiding something. He asks the Narrator to help him find out what it is, but the Narrator refuses without giving any explanation.

Chapter 8. The Narrator congratulates himself on the accuracy and the success of his observations. He then meets Mrs Severn in a garden. They barely speak to each other about the ideas that concern him – which he interprets as a sign that she wants a respite from the strain of acting a part of gaiety. When they do speak it seems to be at cross purposes, about different people – which he interprets as a cover for the truth he thinks she is hiding. He tells Mrs Server directly that he believes Guy Brissenden is in love with her. , by whom they are shortly joined. The Narrator makes his excuses and leaves them together.

Chapter 9. After dinner that night the Narrator talks with Gilbert Long, congratulating himself that he knows Long’s secret (and that Long knows that he knows) but they cannot discuss it openly. A visiting pianist gives a recital, during which the Narrator assumes that all the guests are reflecting privately on the relationships he thinks he has uncovered. He then challenges Lady John, but she answers him in an oblique manner. When she asks him who he is so concerned about, he refuses to answer her. Moreover, he believes that Lady John does not and can not know all the subtle connections between the guests which he perceives.

Chapter 10. As a return to London is in prospect for the next day, the Narrator wonders if all the changes and effects he has observed in the guests might disappear and everything return to normal. By midnight he resolves to escape the problems of analysis by leaving on an early train next morning. But then seeing Gilbert Long alone on the terrace all his curiosity is re-awakened. He then meets Ford Obert and goes in search of Mrs Brissenden who has promised to have a word with him.

Chapter 11. He follows Obert into the library, where he challenges him directly about his interest in Mrs Server. They agree that she has changed, but Obert claims she has reverted to an earlier state of being. Obert claims he has been watching the Brissendens and has reached to same conclusions as the Narrator. However, the Narrator will not accept this admission because he believes that Obert cannot have all the relevant ‘information’. They agree that Mrs Server’s lover may not actually be there at the house. Suddenly Guy Brissenden arrives to say that his wife want to speak to the Narrator, who thinks that maybe Gilbert Long and Mrs Brissenden have been or still are lovers.

Chapter 12. When he meets Mrs Brissenden she looks very young, and he hopes that all will be revealed. But she has nothing of any consequence to tell him. In fact she expects him to make all the revelations. But she does believe that May Server is not involved in the puzzle they have been trying to solve. The Narrator is suddenly quite sure that Gilbert Long is Mrs Brissenden’s lover and that she is protecting him. He challenges her to say who has brought about the remarkable change in Long. In response, she accuses him of being too fanciful and over-analytical.

Chapter 13. When she singularly gives him no concrete information, he interprets this as proof that he is correct in his suppositions. He then invites her to advise him how to get rid of his over-active imagination (which he believes has led him to the truth) – but this is a trick designed to get her to reveal her ‘secret’. But she suddenly declares that she thinks him crazy. He then interrogates her relentlessly about exactly which point in the day she changed her mind about him. Finally she reveals that Gilbert Long has been the centre of her attention – but only as a negative example of the Narrator’s idea of a stupid person being elevated intellectually by a romantic liaison. She declares that Gilbert Long was not transformed at all: he was always stupid and remains so now.

Chapter 14. The Narrator is forced to admit that his theory was all wrong. However, Mrs Brissenden admits that she has been lying and covering up – and that Lady John is the woman in question. Her husband has revealed to her the liaison between Long and Lady John. The Narrator concludes their lengthy nocturnal debate and goes to bed chastened.

Henry James – caricature by Max Beerbohm

The Sacred Fount – principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Newmarch	the country estate where the weekend party takes place
Gilbert Long	a visitor at the party
Mrs Grace Brissenden	a woman of 42
Guy Brissenden	her husband of 29
Lady John	a visitor at the party
Ford Obert	a painter
Mrs May Server	an attractive weekend visitor
Lord Luttley	a weekend visitor
Compte de Dreuil	French visitor
Comptess de Dreuil	his American wife

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Symbol

November 24, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Symbol was not published during Virginia Woolf’s lifetime. Her diaries in the late 1930s record her intention to write something which involved snow and the top of a mountain: ‘There are very few mountain summit moments. I mean, looking out at peace, from a height’. It is interesting to note that this seemingly positive image of a mountain top as the subject of a story contains no hints of the complexities of the narrative or the event which undercuts the ending in its finished version.

The Symbol – critical commentary

Some of Virginia Woolf’s experimental short stories are not much more than static tableaux – non-dramatic sketches of situations held together by related images (Kew Gardens). Some of them might be structured merely by the passage of time (Monday or Tuesday) or by the play of individual imagination (The Mark on the Wall). Others might introduce dramatic tension and the human subjects of conventional prose fiction – only to destroy them as misleading constructions of the imagination (An Unwritten Novel).

The Symbol is Woolf’s version of the ‘surprise ending’ – a story which appears to be concerned with one thing, but which turns out to be about something else – which is precisely the function of the symbol or the metaphor. It is significant that this story originally carried the title ‘Inconclusions’ but was replaced by ‘The Symbol’ during the revision of the typescript some time in 1941 – thus representing her last possible thoughts on the matter.

The mountain is there as a symbol of a challenge which attracts young men to explore it, to climb up it, and to overcome the dangers that it represents. The death of her dying mother is the guilt-inducing symbol of what the letter-writer wishes for – a life free from parental servitude with the possibility of following the family tradition of travel and exploration.

She has wished to explore, like the young men climbing the mountain, but instead has eventually taken the safe option of marriage. There is very little evidence in the text to suggest that a direct comparison is being made, but since there is no other substantial material in the narrative we are free to draw this inference.

Structure

The death of the mountaineers might seem to come as a surprise at the end of the story, but in fact all elements of the outcome of the story have been flagged up in the opening paragraph. The snow is ‘dead white’ [my emphasis]; the atmosphere on the mountain is ‘too high for breathing flesh or fur covered life’; and in the valley below there are ‘graves in the churchyard … recorded the names of several men who had fallen climbing’.

The letter-writer reflects upon the danger that the mountain represents to the local villagers, but does so with a thought which fits exactly her own situation when nursing her dying mother: ‘Ought one not to be ashamed of dwelling upon what after all can’t be cured?’

Study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The Symbol – synopsis

The setting of the story is an Alpine summer resort visually dominated by the local snow-capped mountain. On the balcony of a local hotel an un-named woman is writing to her sister in England, whilst below a young man she knows vaguely is part of a group preparing for the ascent. She thinks the mountain is a symbol, but isn’t quite sure of what.

She reflects on her earlier life when she nursed her dying mother, and thinks how her mother’s death seemed to her at the time like a symbol – because it would release her from caring into the freedom to get married. Coming from an Anglo-Indian family of explorers, she had a desire to explore for herself, but opted for marriage instead.

In her letter she likens the Alpine resort to Birmingham, and mentions that the inhabitants (largely invalids) are dominated by their consciousness of the mountain, and she wonders if it could be ‘removed’ from them as an impediment. But she thinks it is perhaps selfish to be concerned with something which cannot be changed, and has been assured that the mountain is quite safe and benign.

Later that night she learns that the mountaineers, including the young man, have died trying to climb the mountain.

Virginia Woolf – Monk’s House at Rodmell

Other works by Virginia Woolf

Jacob’s Room (1922) was Woolf’s first and most dramatic break with traditional narrative fiction. It was also the first of her novels she published herself, as co-founder of the Hogarth Press. This gave her for the first time the freedom to write exactly as she wished. The story is a thinly disguised portrait of her brother Thoby – as he is perceived by others, and in his dealings with two young women. The novel does not have a conventional plot, and the point of view shifts constantly and without any signals or transitions from one character to another. Woolf was creating a form of story telling in which several things are discussed at the same time, creating an impression of simultaneity, and a flow of continuity in life which was one of her most important contributions to literary modernism.
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Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, more than 25 issues that were published between 1975 and 2002, and featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

The Touchstone

February 17, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Touchstone was published in 1900, and was Edith Wharton’s first novella. It’s an amazingly accomplished piece, considering that she did not think she had matured as a writer until more than a decade later, when she published Ethan Frome (1911), which she described as marking the end of her ‘apprenticeship’ as a writer.

Margaret Aubyn’s letters

The Touchstone – critical commentary

Context

Edith Wharton was a great friend of Henry James, who had written a number of stories dealing with the relationship of authors to society in general, and the problems of biographical revelations in particular. James’s stories generally put the case for the right of authors to retain an autonomous degree of control over the details of their private lives, and he often depicts those who would reveal intimate aspects of a writer’s biography as sneaks, gossip-mongers, and prying busybodies. The most celebrated case of this kind is his novella The Aspern Papers (1888).

Edith Wharton follows this line of argument in The Touchstone. There is never any doubt in Glennard’s mind that by releasing Margaret Aubyn’s letters to the public, he is betraying both her and the one-sided relationship they had in the past. Moreover, he makes the decision to publish for rather dubious motives – because he needs the money in order to marry Alexa Trent, from whom he conceals the fact that the letters were written to him.

However, this view of publishing biographical materials is countered by Flamel’s view that to do so in the case of Margaret Aubyn would be a public service – because she is an important and renowned figure, and because no personal harm can be done to her since she is now dead. At first this appears to be a slippery, diabolical argument leading Glennard into a Faustian pact with his publisher, from which he profits again and again. Hence the dramatic significance of the royalty cheque he receives and his attempt to salve his conscience by paying Flamel a commission fee.

The reader is given ever reason to think that Flamel has underhand motives and is paving his way to seduce Alexa – but in fact he refuses the fee, and turns out to have acted honourably all along, even to the extent of going to live abroad, with the implication that he has been in love with Alexa but is sacrificing his own interests out of respect for hers.

The novella

The basic requirements of the novella form are that it should be short, concentrated, centred on a single theme, with few characters, and tightly focused in terms of time scale, characters, and location. The Touchstone fulfils all these requirements. It has three principal characters, the drama is centred upon Glennard’s moral struggle in his dealings with the other two – and his past relationship with Margaret Aubyn, who is a very good example of a character exerting influence from beyond the grave. And the letters themselves form an appropriate symbol of the central issue of the story – the revelation of biographical information about a well-known writer.

There is more than a hint that Margaret Aubyn is a thinly veiled portrait of Edith Wharton herself. And it’s also interesting to note that she publishes a volume with the title Pomegranate Seed – which Edith Wharton was to do herself when she wrote a story with that title thirty years later.

The Touchstone – study resources

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Touchstone – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

The Touchstone – AudioBook format at Gutenberg

The Touchstone – paperback edition – Amazon UK

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Touchstone – plot synopsis

Part I. New York lawyer Stephen Glennard sees a request for information relating to famous novelist Margaret Aubyn. He is in possession of hundreds of her letters written at a time when she was in love with him but when he was unable to reciprocate her feelings. He feels financially pinched and does not have enough money to marry Alexa Trent.

Part II. He has been in love with Alexa for two years, and Margaret Aubyn has been dead for three. Glennard met Margaret Aubyn when he was at university, and after her husband died Glennard moved to work in New York, which is when her correspondence began. She decided to move to London, from where she continued her eloquent and vivid sequence of letters. Glennard realises that he is in possession of a rich seam of materials.

Part III. Alexa reports that her aunt has invited her to live abroad in Europe for two years. This is to relieve the financial burden on her family which Alexa creates as the eldest unmarried daughter. Glennard tries to persuade her to marry him instead, and live frugally.

Part IV. Glennard feels vaguely guilty that he has been standing in the way of Alexa finding a husband who can support her. His friend Flamel confirms that a collection of Margaret Aubyn’s letters would be very valuable to a publisher. Glennard plans to invest any money he might raise from such a sale.

Part V. One year later Glennard is married to Alexa, they are living in the suburbs, and his investments are doing very well. Flamel has helped him to edit the letters, and their publication is a big success. Yet Glennard feels oppressed by a sense of regret that he has somehow betrayed Margaret Aubyn. He is worried that Alexa might discover his secret that the letters were written to him, and he is anxious about his pact with Flamel.

Part VI. Margaret Aubyn’s letters are discussed by a group of people on Flamel’s yacht, following which Alexa asks Glennard to buy her a copy of the Letters. Alexa appears to have closer and closer ties with Flamel.

Part VII. Alexa knows that Glennard was acquainted with Margaret Aubyn in his earlier university days. Glennard invites Flamel to dinner, where this connection is revealed. Glennard is anxious about how much his wife and Flamel know respectively about each other’s knowledge of the situation.

Part VIII. Glennard is so worried about what Alexa might discover that he decides to move back into to New York so that he will have less personal contact with her because of social life in the city. A royalty cheque appears as a result of the publishing success, and he feels more guilty than ever. Friends report on a public reading of the Letters at the Waldorf Hotel. Glennard suspects that Flamel might have revealed his secret to Alexa.

Part IX. Glennard gives Alexa the chance to discover his secret by letting her see a letter from his publisher. Alexa meanwhile continues to have more and more private meetings with Flamel.

Part X. Time goes on, and Glennard still does not discuss his guilty secret with Alexa, as a consequence of which they begin to drift further and further apart. He sees a picture of Margaret Aubyn in a magazine and begins to imaginatively re-live their relationship.

Part XI. Glennard goes to the cemetery and scatters flowers on Margaret Aubyn’s grave.

Part XII. Glennard’s morbid connection with Margaret Aubyn continues and leads him into a solitary way of life. But he is suddenly shocked to encounter Alexa and Flamel together in an out-of-the-way part of Manhattan. He sends Flamel a cheque as commission for his part in placing the letters with a publisher. When Flamel pays him a surprise visit, Glennard reveals that the letters were written to him, and he lies to Flamel, claiming that Alexa was aware of the fact. Flamel rejects his arguments and his action as insulting, and tears up the cheque.

Part XIII. Glennard wonders if Alexa does not realise the letters were written to him, and he begins to value her again. He challenges her in a jealous outburst over her meeting with Flamel, who she tells him is leaving for Europe. She also reveals her distaste for the letters and the ‘inheritance’ they provided for the establishment of their marriage. She argues that the money should be repaid. Glennard asks her if Flamel is leaving because he loves Alexa, and he admits that he has deceived Flamel, who has behaved honourably throughout the episode.

Part XIV. Alexa makes sacrifices and they live frugally. Glennard calculates that it will take two years to repay the money. He is tortured by his inability to make amends to the dead Margaret Aubyn, and he wallows in self-pity. However, Alexa argues that Margaret Aubyn has given him the opportunity to ‘discover himself’, even if it was via a base action on his part.

The Touchstone – principal characters

Stephen Glennard	a New York lawyer
Alexa Trent	his fiancé, and later his wife
Mrs Margaret Aubyn	a celebrated novelist, his former lover
Barton Flamel	a rich aesthete and collector

Video documentary

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Tragic Muse

September 22, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Tragic Muse first appeared as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly from January 1889 through to 1890. The novel was then presented in three volumes published in America by the Boston publishers Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1890, and in England by Macmillan at virtually the same time. It is one of the longest of Henry James’ novels, and deals with a subject dear to his heart – the relationships between life and art.

first English edition in three volumes 1890

The Tragic Muse – critical commentary

The main theme

It is no surprise that this novel attracted very little attention when it was first published, and has generated so little citical commentary in the years since. The novel contains none of the careful organisation and tight structure of James’s more successful works, and its main theme of the artistic life versus social integration is not well realised.

Nick Dormer has a career as a member of parliament virtually handed to him on a silver dinner plate, but he turns it down in favour of his enthusiasm for painting. But his skill and his application as a painter are never convincingly presented. It is also difficult to believe that somebody would give up a parliamentary career on the strength of one painting which was deemed successful. He remains a weak and dilettantish figure throughout.

His sister Biddy’s activity as a sculptor is simply not realised at all. She merely hovers in her brother’s background as a fellow enthusiast.

Only Miriam’s transformation from pushy and ambitious would-be actress with few skills has any credibility attached to it. She develops via application and practice, through to a successful professional career. This part of the novel is altogether more convincing.

The length of the novel

This is possibly one of the slowest-moving of all James’s novels. It’s not only inordinately long (almost 200,000 words) but inordinately long-winded in terms of narrative technique and the recounting of events. The pace is so glacially slow at times that paragraph upon paragraph is devoted to issues as trivial as who might or might not turn up to a restaurant for lunch.

The result is a form of authorial ‘thinking out loud’ which includes multiple possibilities for almost every scene – all of which merely represent James’s point of view – not that of any of his characters. Thus the tale is essentially told, not shown.

James and the theatre

It is interesting to note that the overt subject matter of the novel (reflected in its title) of the stage and acting are topics which fascinated James and were to lead to his own ultimately disastrous excursions into playwrighting and the theatre. He converted his own early novel The American (1876) into a play which had modest success in the 1890s. On the strength of this he wrote a dozen plays, but all of them proved unsuccessful, and most famously his costume drama Guy Domville was booed off stage on its first night in England in 1895.

Nevertheless, although he was deeply wounded by the experience, he retained his interest in dramatic structures, and some of the works he conceived as dramas were later converted to novels which consist largely of conversations between the characters – such as The Other House (1896) and The Outcry.

It is also worth noting that almost all of his most carefully crafted works were later successfully adapted for the cinema – from Washington Square (1880) The Bostonians (1886) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881) to The Golden Bowl (1904). And a number of his shorter works have been turned into operas and plays, such as Owen Wingrave (1892) The Aspern Papers (1888) and The Turn of the Screw (1898).

However, despite the presence of drama in many of his novels and stories, the choice of theatre and acting as a serious topic for The Tragic Muse presents special difficulties for even so skilled a writer as James. It simply isn’t possible to give a convincing account of an evanescent art form such as the theatre in prose form.

He creates a persuasive sense that Miriam Rooth improves her acting skills as a result of learning from Madame Carré, and he evokes both the backstage and front of house atmosphere of the theatre very well, but the essence of what drama means eludes him.

The same is true in his choice of painting as Nick’s vocation. No matter how many brush strokes across canvass and paint-soaked rags are mentioned, it is virtually impossible to convey with words the visual quality of any work Nick produces. We are simply told that his portraits of Miriam (and he only paints two during the entire novel) are successful.

The actress

Contemporary readers might find it difficult to understand why Peter is confronted with a dilemma in his passion for Miriam. He is in love with her, but in order to make a relationship with her he must persuade her to give up the very thing in which she is passionately interested – the theatre.

During the nineteenth century (and into the middle of the twentieth) the profession of actress was regarded as not far short of prostitution. Peter is a diplomat – and could not possibly combine a relationship with an actress and his career.

There was a long-standing tradition of upper-class males who had casual and semi-official liaisons with actresses. One thinks of the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry (real name Emile Charlotte Le Breton). But these relationships could not normally be incorporated into polite society. In Peter’s own words of warning to Miriam “e;an actress would never be invited into the drawing room of a lady”e;.

So Peter realises that there is a total incompatibility between his duties and protocols as a diplomat and his passion for such a bohemian figure as an actress – a problem which he solves by his sudden decision to marry Biddy at the end of the novel.

Those who wish to take a psycho-analytic approach to the interpretation of the story will not fail to recognise that it is one (of many in James’s oeuvre) in which two men (very close friends, and cousins) are in love with the same woman – the magnetic figure of Miriam.

Loose ends

Given the enormous length of the novel, it is reasonable to complain that it contains far too many loose ends – lines of the plot which are unexamined, unfinished, or unexplained (to use the three part amplification figure which James employs throughout the narrative).

Nick’s elder brother, Percival Dormer, is suddenly mentioned towards the end of the novel, and for a moment it looks as if he will add to the significance of the family’s social fortunes – but he just as suddenly disappears and is never mentioned again. This is bad on two counts.

As the elder son, it is more likely that the family’s hopes would rest on him, not Nick. It is the elder son who would be expected to follow his father’s role in parliament, but all those hopes (and Mr Carteret’s money) are placed on Nick. These apparently minor details undermine a significant building block of the realist novel – social accuracy, plausibility, and consistency.

Biddy is an interesting character in embryo. She is spirited, independent, and like her brother inclined to practice art. But her activity as a sculptress is never persuasive and simply evaporates in the hurried and unsatisfying conclusion when she marries Peter and disappears to his next diplomatic posting.

Julia Dallow too is a potentially interesting character – a rich and attractive woman who wishes to engage in (Liberal) politics at a national and local level. She is the financial power behind the selection of a candidate for the constituency of Harsh – though it should be noted that this is a ‘rotten’ (more euphemistically a ‘pocket’) borough.

Gabriel Nash is like a Satan figure, coming in to plead the case for aestheticism and lure people (Nick in particular) away from their civic duty. Nash appears from nowhere, plants his ideas, then disappears again. Nobody knows where he lives, and when Nick tries to paint his portrait, he escapes, claiming to be ‘indestructible’.

The Tragic Muse – study resources

The Tragic Muse – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Tragic Muse – Library of America – Amazon US

The Tragic Muse – Kindle edition

The Tragic Muse – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James – biographical notes

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

The Tragic Muse – plot summary

Chapter I. Nicholas (Nick) Dormer is on a cultural visit to Paris with his widowed mother and sisters. Lady Dormer has severe doubts about the moral effects of the modern art they are viewing. Nick however believes that all art contributes to a general good.

Chapter II. Nick is the second eldest son of a politician and a would-be painter who is aware of his limitations. His sister Bridget (Biddy) wants to be a sculptor. They meet Gabriel Nash, who is an aphoristic conversationalist and an aesthete. Biddy is intrigued by him.

Chapter III. Grace Dormer and her mother go to lunch and discuss people’s marriage and money prospects. They are joined by their relative Peter Sherringham who reveals that Nick is being tipped for his father’s old seat as a member of parliament.

Chapter IV. Everyone thinks that Nick should ‘apply’ for the seat – but he needs money to do so (because it is a rotten borough). Nash is against the plan: he offers to introduce the family to his friend Miriam Rooth, an actress, and her mother. The theatre is considered as an artistic medium. Nick thinks it is a feeble art form; Sherringham is an enthusiastic supporter; and Lady Dormer disapproves of it completely.

Chapter V. His mother wishes that Nick were more active and enthusiastic about the chance of the parliamentary seat, and feels disappointed not to find Julia Dallow available as a potential financial supporter. Meanwhile Peter defends his enthusiasm for the theatre to Nick.

Chapter VI. The family have a restaurant dinner with Julia Dallow who is the power behind the appointment of a candidate at Harsh, her estate and parliamentary rotten borough. Julia and Nick then discuss his prospects. He is sceptical about standing: she is willing to put up the money in order to keep out the Tories.

Chapter VII. Nick and Peter meet Miriam Rooth and her mother at the home of Madame Carré. Miriam delivers recitations, but Madame Carré does not think she has any real talent. Peter however is keen to support and promote her.

Chapter VIII. Miriam and her mother are living in reduced circumstances. She gives another recital next day at an event organised by Peter. He is embarrassed by her performance and thinks her vulgar – but is nevertheless attracted to her.

Chapter IX. Gabriel Nash talks to Nick about his personal theories of the aesthetic life – turning his own feelings into a form of art. Nick is going to stand for parliament, but wishes to be a painter. He feels the force of the family’s political tradition as a burden.

Paris Street – Caillebot

Chapter X. Peter feels oppressed by the promise he has made to help Miriam, and he also fears he might be falling in love with her. She gives another pushy and bad recital chez Madame Carré. Peter also feels that critics treat actresses badly.

Chapter XI. Peter and Miriam discuss her life of poverty-in-exile and speaking styles in the theatre. He argues that she is without a genuine personality, but makes herself into a work of art, and is acting all the time.

Chapter XII. Peter is conscious that the protocols of his career in the diplomatic service mean that he should keep his theatrical enthusiasm under firmer control. He disregards Mrs Rooth’s superficiality, and the summer passes with MIriam still taking lessons from Madame Carré. Peter tries to educate her and pays for better lodgings. He thinks he might rise above personal issues, but when he goes back to London at the end of the summer he realises that he is completely in love with Miriam.

Chapter XIII. Nick is elected as Liberal Party member of parliament for Harsh. His mother wants him to marry Julia, who has financed his campaign. But Nick is reluctant, not really interested in politics, and wishes to retain his freedom. However, Lady Agnes argues that it would help her and his two unmarried sisters to establish themselves socially, and this touches his sense of family duty.

Chapter XIV. When Nick stays at Harsh with Julia and starts engaging with his political duties, he realises how they are enhanced by her presence.

Chapter XV. Nick rows out to an island on the lake at Julia’s estate at Harsh and proposes to Julia in a little Roman temple. They tease each other and he puts on a front of frivolity. Julia says his mother and sisters can live in one of her spare houses – Broadwood.

Chapter XVI. Nick visits his benefactor Mr Carteret at Beauclere and appreciate centuries of tradition that the house, grounds, and an old Abbey represents. Carteret is a liberal traditionalist with a well-informed but limited range of interests.

Chapter XVII. Next morning Carteret dispenses advice to Nick on his parliamentary responsibilities – which depresses Nick. But he approves of Nick’s marriage plans and promises to bestow money on him to give him financial independence. Nick however reveals that Julia wishes to wait for a year to be married.

Chapter XVIII. Peter feels that his ambition to succeed in his career is seriously compromised by his feelings for Miriam – who would be entirely unsuitable and unacceptable as a diplomat’s wife. He returns to Paris and encourages Mrs Rooth to take Miriam to London. She has meanwhile been taken up by admirer Basil Dashwood, who Peter claims to be keen to meet.

XIX. Peter follows Miriam and Dashwood to Madame Carré’s where she demonstrates that she has improved her skills. He befriends Dashwood and claims he has a potential engagement for Miriam arranged on the English stage.

Chapter XX. Peter takes Miriam and her mother to the Theatre Francais where he gives them a tour of its professional inner mechanisms and architecture – the theatre as seen from an actor’s point of view.

Le Théatre Francais

XXI Peter flirts with Miriam and offers to take her away from the theatre. They meet the star actress Mademoiselle Voisin, who takes them to her dressing room. Miriam is very impressed by her urbane style and the tradition of theatre that she represents. Peter repeats his offer to marry her – arguing that if she remains as an actress she will be excluded from polite society.

XXII Nick is frustrated by Julia’s making him wait to be married. She wishes to mingle with political society, whereas he wants to get away from it. They come close to arguing, but she finally agrees to marry him in five week’s time.

XXIII Nick retreats to his artist’s studio for the Easter holidays, where he is visited by Gabriel Nash, who expounds his theories of aestheticism once more. On seeing Nick’s paintings and drawings he insists that Nick has a talent it would be immoral to neglect.

XXIV Nash thinks Nick ought to give up parliament and devote himself to painting. Nick is flattered but sceptical. Nash suggests that Nick should paint Miriam’s portrait.

XXV Nick has begun to paint Miriam’s portrait. She has become successful on the stage and patronises Peter. Nick is determined not to fall in love with her.

XXVI Miriam recounts the events of her theatrical success to Nick. It has been made possible by Peter’s buying the rights to a play, then giving them to her as a source of income. He continues with the portrait – only to be suddenly be confronted by Julia, who is shocked by the intimate scene she stumbles upon.

XXVII That evening Julia explains in a jealous fit that she thinks Nick prefers art to the political life she has created for him. She feels he has betrayed her, breaks off their relationship, calls on her old friend Mrs Gresham, and goes off to Paris.

XXVIII Julia meets her brother Peter in Paris and encourages him to pay attention to Biddy Dormer. Peter goes to London and tries to locate Miriam without success, but when he goes to Nick’s studio, he finds Biddy there.

Sarah Bernhardt

XXIX Peter and Biddy discuss Nick and Julia’s problems, the fact that Lady Agnes is upset because none of her children are married. They also consider the value of art, for which Nick is going to give up his parliamentary seat. Biddy is sculpting and thinks she will never marry. They look at Nick’s portrait of Marian, which is very good.

XXX Peter takes Biddy and her friend to the theatre to see Miriam. He finds her transcendentally accomplished and develops grandiose visions of a publicly subsidised theatre. He discusses Miriam’s rise to fame with Dashwood, and feels patronised by him.

XXXI Peter spends the afternoon with Miriam and her arty hangers-on. She expands upon her ambitions. He becomes her regular coach and dramaturg. He regards Dashwood as a lightweight, but remains ambiguous in his feelings towards Gabriel Nash.

XXXII Mr Carteret becomes ill, and Nick is summoned to Beauclere. He feels ill at ease, partly because of his non-marriage to Julia, and partly because of his intention to quit parliament. Carteret summons him to tell him something important.

XXXIII Carteret want to know about Nick’s marriage to Julia, on which his promised financial settlement depends. Nick gives him an embarrassed explanation of that particular truth, which upsets the old man. Later the same day he demands the full story, and Nick is forced to reveal his plan to quit politics – as a result of which he will forfeit sixty thousand pounds.

XXXIV Nick is forced to reveal the whole story to his mother, who is mortified with disappointment. She feels that they might have to give up living at Broadwood following the rift with Julia and that Nick’s loss of Carteret’s legacy, plus giving up parliament is a shame the whole family must bear.

XXXV Nick is tempted to go abroad, but realises that he must stay and face the consequences of his actions. He is visited by Gabriel Nash, who reveals that Peter is in love with Miriam Rooth, who in her turn is in love with Nick – ever since the meeting and silent clash with Julia in the studio.

XXXVI Peter and Nash discuss Miriam’s prospects for success, and the fact that she is in love with Nick. Nash opines that she would give up the theatre for Nick – but that there would probably be a heavy price to pay.

XXXVII In Miriam’s bohemian late afternoon salon she bandies with Peter, flatters Nick, and treats Dashwood like a skivvy. Peter feels mildly jealous of her praise for his friend and cousin Nick.

XXXVIII Peter wonders why he feels any rivalry with his friend Nick when (theoretically) he has nothing at stake with Miriam. He applies for a new diplomatic posting and is given a position as ambassador to a state in Central America.

XXXIX Peter goes to see Lady Agnes, who is still eaten up with Nick’s giving up parliament and his loss of prospects. She takes an exaggerated interest in Peter’s career development and salary, which he realises is a poorly disguised wish that he should marry her daughter Biddy.

Sarah Benhardt as Cleopatra

XL Whilst Peter is preparing himself for a move to the tropics, he is summoned by Miriam to a dress rehearsal next morning. He goes, and is obviously under her spell.

XLI She summons him again the following day for a private assignation – but then forgets what she wished to discuss with him. He ends up confessing that he is leaving because he is desperately in love with her, and because he realises that a relationship with her is not possible.

XLII Nick has begun to regret giving up parliament, and doesn’t think he has any genuine artistic talent either. He is visited by Peter, who has conflicting social engagements with Miriam and Lady Agnes.

XLIII Biddy arrives at the studio and there is banter with Peter and Nick – then Miriam arrives with her mother. Peter and Biddy go shopping and discuss Miriam, on which topic Biddy full of practical good sense.

XLIV Arriving at the studio, Miriam and her mother flatter Nick – and themselves. Nick continues a second portrait of Miriam promised to Peter whilst Mrs Rooth evaluates his belongings. The two women have invited Biddy to visit them, and they discuss Miriam’s strategy for dealing with Peter.

XLV In the evening the first night of Miriam’s new play is a resounding success. Peter refuses to go back stage with Nick in the intervals, but at the final curtain he sends a request to Miriam on a visiting card – which she accepts.

XLVI Peter goes back to Miriam’s house, where she joins him. He offers to marry her if she will give up the theatre. She refuses. They argue about the social and moral merits of the theatre. In desperation he asks for re-consideration in a year’s time. Mrs Rooth then arrives and promises to help him.

XLVII Nick continues to drift morally, but when Julia returns from her travels abroad he feels that the family should give back the house they have borrowed from her. Julia accepts their offer, but then invites Biddy to live with her at Harsh. She then moves back into Broadwood and asks Lady Agnes and Grace to join her there again.

XLVIII Miriam continues to be more and more celebrated, but Nick’s second portrait of her is unfinished. She visits for a sitting, flirts and philosophises with him, then leaves for a theatrical tour of the provinces.

XLIX Gabriel Nash visits Nick’s studio and predicts that Nick will reach a compromise with Julia and will end up a painter of society portraits. Nick begins to paint Nash’s portrait, but Nash feels uncomfortable, argues that he is ‘indestructible’ and then suddenly disappears – never to return.

L Some months later Nick spends Xmas at Broadwood with his mother and sisters, then goes to Paris for six weeks. Biddy visits Nick’s studio to tell him that Julia wants him to paint her portrait. Miriam suddenly appears with Dashwood, ready for the first night of her new role as Juliet. She arranges a box for Nick and Biddy.

LI At the theatre that night Peter suddenly appears, back from his posting in the Americas. Nick reveals to him that Miriam has just married Dashwood. Peter immediately switches his attention to Biddy, then marries her and takes her on to his next posting abroad.

Henry James’s study

The Tragic Muse – principal characters

I	an un-named narrator who makes occasional appearances
Lady Agnes Dormer	a haughty and traditionalist widow
Percival Dormer	her eldest son, who never appears
Nicholas Dormer	her younger son, a reluctant politician and would-be painter
Grace Dormer	her eldest daughter
Bridget (Biddy) Dormer	her youngest daughter, and would-be sculptor
Peter Sherringham	a family cousin and diplomat, with an enthusiasm for the theatre
Mrs Julia Dallow	Peter’s sister, a rich widow
Gabriel Nash	an aesthete friend of Nick’s from Oxford
Miriam Rooth	a half-Jewish actress
Mrs Rooth	her mother, a widow
Rudolph Roth	Miriam’s father, an artistic stockbroker
Madame Carré	an old French actress
Mr Carteret	a family friend and financial supporter of Nick
Mts Gresham	a general factotum to Julia at Harsh
Basil Dashwood	actor and admirer of Miriam

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Triumph of Night

February 16, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Triumph of Night was first published in 1914, and was one of a number of ghost stories written by Edith Wharton in the first part of the twentieth century. She believed that a tale of the supernatural should have the ability to ‘send a cold shiver down one’s spine’, but she did not resort to conventional depictions of ghosts and the spirit world. Instead, she believed in evoking states of psychological mystery and terror – rather like her friend and fellow novelist Henry James, who shared her interest in supernatural stories.

a New England winter scene

The Triumph of Night – critical commentary

It is difficult to offer a rational critical analysis of a ghost story unless you are prepared to suspend disbelief in the supernatural, but fortunately Edith Wharton does not make an understanding of The Triumph of Night dependent upon a belief in ghosts.

The story at a surface reading is seemingly mysterious, almost to the point of being inexplicable – but in fact Edith Wharton is employing a literary device she uses in some of her other stories. That is, the apparent omission of important information which only becomes available when the story has been subject to close reading and interpretation.

When stranded on a wintry night, George Foxon is treated to warm hospitality by John Lavington, a man who he has never met before; and yet despite being offered the comfort of a flower-filled bedroom, Foxon feels that there is something discomforting about the house:

Mr Lavington’s intense personality – intensely negative, yet intense all the same – must, in some occult way, have penetrated every corner of his dwelling.

Mr Lavington has a smile – but it is a fixed smile. And it becomes apparent that despite his superficial generosity, he does not have his nephew’s best interests at heart. Frank Rainer, who seems to be suffering from tuberculosis, has been advised for the sake of his health to go to a warmer, drier climate in New Mexico. Indeed, his state of being is so enfeebled that Mr Balch thinks he should go there ‘at once‘. But his uncle has kept him in New Hampshire, and he sends him out into the snow swept night to retrieve Foxon when he leaves the house in fear.

We do not need a supernatural explanation for the story. Young Frank Rainer is virtually murdered by his uncle John Lavington. But what is Lavington’s motive?

The business meeting Lavington has concluded with Grisben and Balch is the witnessing of Frank Rainer’s will, being made on the occasion of his having reached the age of twenty-one. The event is punctuated by rumours of an impending financial crisis – ‘the biggest crash since ’93’. And we learn later that Lavington was caught up in financial corruption on a ‘Gigantic’ scale – and yet he is able to come forward with a plan to bale out the cement company with a donation of ten million dollars of his own money.

The implication is that he has come by this money via Frank’s will, and that he is therefore responsible for Frank’s death. Underneath the fixed smile, that is his truly malevolent intention – and it is that which Foxon ‘sees’ in the double figure who appear behind Lavington’s chair in the business meeting and at dinner. The double is the truly and ‘intensely negative’ side of Lavington who represents that unsavoury and unprincipled side of American capitalism.

Foxon’s dilemma is that he was vaguely aware that something was wrong, but he did nothing to act – in time. He felt that he was ‘the instrument singled out to warn and save’ someone. He is with young Frank in his last moments and releases his fur collar – only to have his hands covered in blood – from Frank’s death by tuberculosis, brought on by the hostile climate of New England in which his uncle has kept him.

The Triumph of Night – study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Triumph of Night – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

The Triumph of Night – paperback edition – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton – biography

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Edith Wharton at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Edith Wharton’s Short Stories – publication details

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Triumph of Night – plot synopsis

Part I. George Foxon has been employed by Mrs Culme as a secretary. He is travelling to join her in New Hampshire when he is stranded at a remote train station on a stormy mid-winter night. Frank Rainer, a friendly but emaciated young man offers him temporary lodgings at the house of John Lavington, his rich uncle, where Foxon is made very welcome.

Part II. The house is warm and comfortable, yet Foxon detects something cold and unfriendly in its ambiance. His bedroom is full of flowers. He joins John Lavington and two business associates who are witnessing the will of Frank Rainer, who has just reached his majority of twenty-one. The group is joined briefly by a mysterious figure who casts hostile glances at Frank.

Part III. The group of men go to dinner, where Frank’s health is discussed. He has been advised to leave for a drier and warmer climate in New Mexico, and is offered a free trip and accommodation there. Foxon sees the mysterious figure in the room again, standing behind John Lavington’s chair, looking malevolently at Frank, though nobody else appears to notice. They drink a toast to Frank, but Foxon is transfixed and terrified by the mystery figure.

Part IV. He bolts to his room, anxious that he alone should be singled out to witness the figure. He rushes out of the house into the snow and dark, wondering if his social isolation has predisposed him to such visions. Frank Rainer catches up with him, and they start back to return to the house, but Foxon feels that he is leading Frank back to his doom. They stop at the lodge, where Frank collapses and dies.

Part V. Foxon subsequently has a breakdown, then goes on a tour of Malaysia to recover. There he reads in old newspapers that John Lavington has been involved in a gigantic financial scandal, from which he has bought himself out with ten million dollars. Foxon regrets that he was given the chance to save someone, but did not act in time, and feels that he has ‘blood on his hands’.

Principal characters

George Foxon	a Boston secretary
Mrs Culme	his new employer, who he never meets
Frank Rainer	a cheerful but sickly young man (21)
John Lavington	his rich uncle
Mr Grisben	business associate of Lavington
Mr Balch	business associate of Lavington

Video documentary

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

The Verdict

June 24, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Verdict first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine, number 43 for June 1908. The story was subsequently included in Edith Wharton’s collection of short fiction, The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories published by Charles Scribner’s in 1908.

cover design by Parish Maxfield

The Verdict – critical comments

Like her good friend Henry James, Edith Wharton was very fond of writing stories about artists – particularly painters, sometimes writers, but very rarely musicians. And like James she was confronted by the difficulty of rendering an account of a visual medium such as painting in the very different medium of words. It is not easy to say why or how a painting is great or a failure by merely describing it.

This story is essentially a critique of bad art. Gisburn has been a popular success, but the implication is that his work is second rate. Rickham thinks him a ‘cheap genius’. In the absence of any other evidence, we are forced to take Rickham’s word for it that Gisburn is a bad painter:

all the hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which … he managed to divert attention from the real business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail.

And eventually even Gisburn is forced to recognise his lack of genuine artistic talent when confronted by the (dead) Stroud and his donkey sketch. That is the ostensible subject of the story – the reason why Gisburn gave up painting. But the ironic twist to the tale is that instead of completing the commission to paint Stroud, he recommends another young artist, Victor Grindle – and thereby passes on to him the reputation of fashionable (and shallow) success. As he remarks to Rickham:

the irony of it is that I am still painting – since Grindle’s doing it for me. The Strouds stand alone, and happen once – but there’s no exterminating our kind of art.

The Verdict – study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Descent of Man and Other Stories – Project Gutenberg

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Verdict – story synopsis

The narrator Rickham hears that his friend Jack Gisburn has suddenly given up his successful career as a fashionable portrait painter. The move is regretted by his sitters, but not by fellow painters.

Three years later Rickham visits Gisburn on the Riviera to find out why he gave up painting. Gisburn has married a rich widow and enjoys collecting works of art. But none of his own work is on display in the villa. His wife attributes this to his modesty, but she shows Rickham a portrait of herself which Rickham describes as ‘false virtuosity’.

Gisburn then takes Rickham to his private study where there is a small painting (of a donkey) by a famous artist, Stroud. Gisburn explains it was a gift from the Mrs Stroud, presented to him when he went to paint Stroud’s portrait immediately following his death. Mrs Stroud wanted her husband’s reputation vindicated by a fashionable artist – which was pre-eminently Gisburn at the time.

However, whilst Gisburn was attempting the commission he felt as if Stroud was watching him critically, and he realised that his famous ‘technique’ was just a sham. This is the reason why he gave up painting. Mrs Stroud is disappointed, so Gisburn recommends an upcoming portrait painter Victor Grindle, who completes the commission successfully, and thus takes over Gisburn’s reputation where he has left off.

Principal characters

Mr Rickham	the narrator
Jack Gisburn	a fashionable portrait painter
Mrs Gisburn	his wife
Victor Grindle	the next young upcoming fashionable painter

first English edition – Macmillan 1908

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

The Warden

November 16, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Warden was first published in 1855 by Longman. It was Trollope’s fourth novel, but the first in the series which became known as The Barsetshire Chronicles, and it established his reputation as a popular novelist. The others in the sequence are Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset.

The opening of the novel makes it clear that Barchester was supposed to be a cathedral town in the south west of England, and it is probably constructed imaginatively from elements of Salisbury and Wells cathedrals, which Trollope knew well from his travels around the south west in his professional capacity as inspector of the postal system. (He is credited with having invented the post box.)

Anthony Trollope

The Warden – critical commentary

The strengths

Undoubtedly the main strength of this novel is the characterisation of the Reverend Harding – the gentle, considerate widower who looks after his charges in the hospital with loving care; who has a passion for music and has published a book on the subject at his own expense; and who plays the cello imaginatively when in an emotionally charged state. He also has a finely developed conscience, which does not let him continue in a sinecure that provides him with a generous living for little effort and few responsibilities.

Both friends and enemies alike urge him to stay where he is, but he cannot live with the thought that the money which provides his generous income might rightly belong to the twelve paupers whose care is his raison d’etre as warden.

Contemporary and modern readers alike can be forgiven for thinking that some last-minute reprieve will solve his dilemma – and it is to Trollope’s credit that no such melodramatic solution comes about. Harding moves out of his comfortable home with his unmarried daughter; he sells furniture; he goes to live in rented accommodation; and he ends up in a much smaller parish on a reduced income.

The reader therefore is left with no uplifting conclusion to the novel – except that Reverend Harding has acted according to his conscience and paid the material price of doing so. This plot construction is admirably restrained, and the best feature of the novel.

The weaknesses

But there are a number of weaknesses. The most important is thematic; the lesser weaknesses are technical – to do with the art and craft of novel-writing. The main problem arises from the fact that the trigger for the entire drama is political and financial malpractice in the established church. This corruption ranges from simony (the selling of church preferments and benefices) to nepotism (favouritism to relatives in making appointments).

As a major landowner the church had (and still has) vast reservoirs of wealth which it used to pay its clergy, all of which the novel makes fairly clear. And some of the positions they held are largely sinecures. Indeed, part of the warden’s moral dilemma is not just that he is receiving a large annual salary to which he might not be legally entitled, but that he receives this salary for doing next to nothing.

But the study of this moral problem remains at a purely personal level. The warden’s distressed state of mind is traced minutely by Trollope, but no attempt is made to explore the larger issues of ecclesiastical politics, finances, and corruption – even though famous legal cases are mentioned in the narrative.

We do not even know if Reverend Harding’s salary is a legitimate outcome of Hiram’s will or not – because even the Queen’s Council does not come to any conclusion on the matter. The most important legal and financial issue underpinning the story is simply left unexamined.

It is as if Trollope can only see as far as ‘characters’ – the tender hearted warden and the arrogant archdeacon – and is not interested in probing the causes of the social problems that make up his story. Neither is the chain of responsibility for the administration of the will examined, and the roles of the bishop, archdeacon, warden, and steward are all left at the level of friendships and family connections.

Technical weaknesses

There are two problems to which many critics have found objection on the grounds of disrupting the tone and the manner of the novel. The first of these is the introduction of huge digressions when Trollope suddenly launches a chapter-long satirical attack on the Jupiter newspaper – which everybody above the age of fifteen would have known full well to be his fictionalised version of The Times.

The characters and their interaction with each other are suddenly put on hold whilst Trollope criticises the newspaper for its dominance, its undue influence in society, and its lack of accountability (a criticism which he does not think to apply to the church).

These are fairly reasonable views to hold against the press – but Trollope almost abandons his responsibility to construct a coherent novel in his eagerness to berate (at great length) the organ which is bringing questionable practices within the church to the public’s attention.

This is followed by two further digressions with similar purposes – the parodies of Carlyle and Dickens. His accounts of Dr Pessimist Anticant [Thomas Carlyle] and Mr Popular Sentiment [Charles Dickens] become like two obtrusive satirical essays inserted into the delicate fabric of the novel.

It is not Trollope’s opinion of Carlyle and Dickens one objects to, but the fact that no attempt has been made to integrate these episodes with the remainder of the novel. They are materials of a different kind to the lives of the Reverend Harding, his daughters, and his domestic life. As Henry James observes in his essay on Trollope (in Partial Portraits) ‘both these little jeux d’esprit are as infelicitous as they are misplaced’.

This technical flaw is both signalled and reinforced by Trollope’s weakness with names. It is simply not possible to construct a credible fictional world in the realist tradition, containing railways, cathedrals, and named London streets, then populate it with characters called Sir Abraham Haphazard, Dr Pessimist Anticant, Mr Popular Sentiment, and Reverend Quiverful. These belong possibly in an eighteenth century work, but they cannot sit persuasively alongside characters called Eleanor Harding and Mr Chadwick.

The Warden – study resources

The Warden – OUP paperback – Amazon UK

The Warden – OUP paperback – Amazon US

The Warden – All six of the Barsetshire novels – £0.50

The Warden – All the Barsetshire novels – Amazon UK

The Warden – Project Gutenberg eBooks [FREE]

The Warden – Audiobook – FREE at LibriVox

Anthony Trollope – A website with plots summaries, TV and Radio links, quotes, quizzes, seminar groups, competitions – official site of the Trollope Society.

The Warden – plot summary

Chapter 1. The Reverend Septimus Harding is a modest clergyman in the cathedral town of Barchester in the south west of England. He is in charge of an almshouse for twelve old workmen, and he supplements their meagre weekly allowance from his own stipend. Rumours begin to circulate that his own generous income should be divided amongst his charges, according to the terms of Hiram the founder’s will.

Chapter 2. John Bold has inherited property, and although technically a surgeon, he practises medicine amongst the poor without charging for his services. He is a radical reformer and is in love with Harding’s daughter Eleanor. Harding’s son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly disapproves of Bold, who starts legal enquiries into the financial basis of the almshouses (the hospital).

Chapter 3. Bold asks Harding to discuss the terms of Hiram’s will. Harding pleads ignorance, but is upset by the fear that he might be in the wrong in accepting a salary which ought to be distributed amongst more needy recipients. Harding consults the bishop, who refers him to his son the strict archdeacon. Harding also reveals the discomfiture he feels in his position because Bold is linked romantically to his daughter Eleanor.

Chapter 4. The twelve occupants of the hospital are divided over the issue of what they are led to believe is their rightful inheritance of one hundred pounds a year for each man. But eventually nine of them put their names to a petition, defying their ‘leader’ Bunce, who is against the action.

Chapter 5. The archdeacon visits the hospital and lectures the men, criticising them for their petition. He seeks legal advice from a Queen’s Counsel, Sir Abraham Haphazard. The warden is deeply embarrassed by the public dispute and the threat to his good reputation.

Chapter 6. Bold’s sister Mary tries to persuade him to give up the case for the sake of their friendship with the Harding family – but he is resistant. Mary attends a party at the warden’s home, following which Eleanor exchanges views with both her father and with Bold.

Chapter 7. The scandal becomes more widely known and is taken up by the national daily newspaper the Jupiter [The Times] which elevates it to a conflict between Church and State, and between Protestant and Catholic politics.

Chapter 8. The archdeacon lives very comfortably but his practical wife disagrees with his position regarding the scandal – largely because it impedes Eleanor’s chances of securing Bold as a husband. She also thinks it causes unnecessary worry to her father. Chadwick arrives with an opinion from Sir Abraham Haphazard – that there are weaknesses in the legal documents which the archdeacon assumes to be favourable to his case.

Chapter 9. In private conference the archdeacon reveals Sir Haphazard’s opinion to the bishop and the warden, claiming that they have nothing to fear, but insisting that the opinion is kept secret. The warden is deeply troubled by the lack of clarity on the matter, even though the legal opinion clears him of any blame. He thinks of resigning from his position as a solution to the dilemma, but the archdeacon bullies him in the name of the larger good of the Church.

Chapter 10. The warden is completely crestfallen and sees his reputation and his way of life in ruins. He eventually confides in his daughter Eleanor, who comforts him and encourages him to give everything up and live in an untroubled state of simplicity.

Chapter 11. Eleanor decides to rescue her father’s feelings by appealing to John Bold to call off his inquiries. When she does so, Bold pours out his heart and his love for her. There is an implication that these avowals constitute an engagement. He agrees to leave the case alone, even though others might continue to pursue it.

Chapter 12. Bold visits the archdeacon to inform him of his intention to abandon the case. Dr Grantly receives the news with lofty disdain and insults Bold, refusing to believe that he is acting in good faith.

Chapter 13. When Eleanor goes to tell her father that Bold is calling off the action, it is too late. Another editorial in the Jupiter names the warden specifically in the scandal. Harding decides to go to London to confront Haphazard. He also has plans to retire to another parish.

Chapter 14. Bold arrives in London to see Tom Towers, journalist for the Jupiter. A whole chapter is devoted to a satirical critique of the newspaper and the unaccountable power it holds in forming and manipulating public opinion.

Chapter 15. When Bold confronts Towers he finds that the case has been taken up by Dr Pessimist Anticant [Thomas Carlyle] and Mr Popular Sentiment [Charles Dickens]. Towers flatly refuses to use any influence on the paper on the spurious grounds of impartiality and public interest. Bold buys a copy of the serial novel The Almshouse [which is a benign parody of Dickens].

Chapter 16. Rev Harding also goes to London – to see Haphazard and escape from the archdeacon. When he is kept waiting for an appointment he hides in Westminster Abbey, wrestling with his conscience. He then passes time in a supper-house and a coffee shop.

Chapter 17. Sir Abraham Haphazard, the attorney general, tells Harding that Bold has withdrawn his legal action and advises him to forget the issue and continue in his present position. He is unable to explain the exact terms of Hiram’s will. But Harding insists that it is a matter of conscience, and feels that he has no option but to resign from his position as warden.

Chapter 18. When the warden arrives back at his hotel, the archdeacon argues that it would be madness to resign his position – using largely financial arguments. But Rev Harding sticks to his position to resign, even though he will lose his income.

Chapter 19. The next morning, despite entreaties from his daughter to delay the decision, the warden writes two letters of resignation to the bishop then returns home. The archdeacon visits his lawyers, who propose the solution of an exchange arrangement with another parish.

Chapter 20. The bishop accepts Harding’s resignation but offers him money and accommodation in order to help him survive. But Harding refuses both offers – as he does the idea of an ecclesiastic exchange. He bids a sad farewell to the bedesmen in the hospital.

Conclusion. Harding moves into lodgings and eventually becomes preceptor in a small Barchester parish. living in reduced circumstances. Eleanor marries Bold, who gradually becomes friendly with the archdeacon.

The Warden – principal characters

Reverend Septimus Harding	the warden of the hospital for elderly paupers at Barchester
Susan Harding	his elder daughter, married to the archdeacon
Eleanor Harding	his younger daughter, in love with John Bold
Dr Theophilius Grantly	the conservative archdeacon, son of the bishop, and the warden’s son-in-law
John Bold	a non-practising surgeon and radical reformer
Mary Bold	his sister and friend to Eleanor Harding
Chadwick	the steward of Hiram’s will
Finney	Bold’s lawyer
Mr Bunce	the aged ‘sub-warden’ at the hospital
Sir Abraham Haphazard	a London barrister QC
Tom Towers	a journalist and editor of The Jupiter

The Warden – further reading

Ruth apRoberts, Trollope, Artist and Moralist, London: Chatto and Windus, 1971.

Victoria Glendenning, Trollope, London: Pimlico, 2002.

Henry James, Partial Portraits, 1888.

James R. Kincaid, The Novels of Anthony Trollope, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Ellen Moody, Trollope on the Net, London: Hambledon Continuum, 1999.

Richard Mullen, Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in his World, London: Duckworth, 1990.

Bill Overton, The Unofficial Trollope, Lanham Rowman & Littlefield (MD), 1982.

Donald Smalley, Trollope: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 2013.

John Sutherland, Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, and Readers, London: Palgrave, 2006.

Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Stephen Wall, Trollope and Character, London: Faber and Faber, 1988.

The Watering Place

November 23, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Watering Place was not published during Virginia Woolf’s lifetime, and it is possibly the last thing she ever wrote. She records in a diary entry for 16 February 1941 overhearing a conversation in a Brighton restaurant very much like the one in the story. It is one of her short, non-dramatic stories which records a mood through a collection of related images – and for Woolf it has a rather unusual setting.

Mont Blanc pen – the Virginia Woolf special edition

The Watering Place – critical commentary

Running through all three sections of the story are images of fish – the smell of fish in the town; the ‘enormous’ consumption of fish in the restaurant; the ‘queer fishy smell’ that permeates the ladies room; and the ‘skeleton’ of the town left at night.

Along with the fish imagery, there is recurrent mention of the sea – the ‘depths of the sea’ in the opening, then the ‘surge of an indrawing tide’ with which the flushing toilet is compared, and then the town itself, at night, ‘has sunk down into the water’.

It is amazing enough to think of Virginia Woolf writing a story based on a conversation in a women’s toilet, but what is really remarkable about the story is the similarity of the crucial ‘overheard conversation’ with T.S.Eliot’s bar room chat in ‘A Game of Chess’, the second part of The Waste Land:

Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart,
He’ll want to know what you’ve done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.

The common factors are a serviceman and a lower class woman. Eliot’s Albert is ‘coming back’ from the first world war; Woolf’s Bert is in danger of being ‘courtmartialled’ for something he is doing. Eliot’s Lil needs to get a new set of teeth, whilst Woolf’s Gert (a ‘simpering little thing’) is more fortunate, with a set to match Bert’s:

Bert never did care about big women … Ave you seen him since he’s been back? … They’ve both got the same teeth … Are He’s [sic] got such beautiful white teeth … Gert has em too … But his are a bit crooked

It should be noted that Virginia Woolf herself set Eliot’s entire poem in type when it was published by the Hogarth Press in 1923. This was in the early years of the Press, when all production was hand-crafted by Woolf and her husband Leonard.

Study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The Watering Place – synopsis

The first paragraph of the story is an evocation of seaside life presented as a satirical account of its inhabitants described in terms of the seashells used to decorate holiday gifts and memorabilia.

The second paragraph starts in the fishy interior of a restaurant, and then proceeds to the ladies room, where three young women are applying make-up and exchanging gossip. Fragments of their conversation are punctuated by the sound of a flushing toilet.

The story ends with a description of the town at night, illuminated only by fairy lights.

Virginia Woolf podcast

A eulogy to words

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
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Orlando (1928) is one of her lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures. Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at one time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.
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