Silence and Euphamisms in "Souls Belated"

. "Silence"
When Lydia and Gannett are on their way through Northern Italy, far off from their familiar social environment, they are brooding away in "silence": "he feared to speak as much as she did" [206]. It is a silence that is well distinguished from simply meaning "that they had nothing to say" [206]. On the contrary: silence in this case is an intimate form of speechless communication, as it well might happen between lovers in critical phases of their relationship. They fear to discuss openly a problem that has become taboo between them, because to make it open it might jeopardize their relationship - an important motif in E. Wharton's work, it seems: one might only think of the constant and almost unbearable silence used as a structural pattern of Ethan Frome.7 Silence in that work is the expression of a taboo that refers to the unspeakable, the possible scandal and catastrophe of Ethan's marriage, while at the same time it "covers" the mental activities of Ethan and Zeena, who both ruminate on his adulterous deviations for their respective strategies: Ethan to realise his dream of love and Zeena to destroy exactly that possibility.
2. "The thing"
What is repressed and individually reflected on in silence between the lovers in "Souls Belated" is given a euphemistic name: "the thing" [206] seems to be something threatening like a Jamesian "Beast in the jungle" looming and lurking, ready to jump and make the people concerned epiphanically aware "of the unspoken" and its consequences, of the deeply rooted and unescapable "reality"8 of their existences. The unspoken "thing" in "Souls Belated," actually referring to the document of divorce that arrives for Lydia just as they leave the hotel at Bologna, is now hidden and packed in her dressing bag in the rack of the compartment overhead, hanging above them like a sword of Damocles:

[...] he feared to speak as much as she did.[...] If they avoided a question it was obviously, unconcealably because the question was disagreeable. [...] Their silence [...] might simply mean that they had nothing to say; [...] Lydia had learned to distinguish between real and factitious silences; and under Gannett's she now detected a hum of speech to which her own thoughts made breathless answer.
How could it be otherwise, with that thing between them. [...] The thing was there, in her dressing bag, symbolically suspended over her head and his. [206]

What would objectively seem to be the final solution of their problem caused by the circumstantial obstacle to their love - Lydia's unfortunate marriage to Tillotson - does not happily give way to their freedom of emotions and love fulfillment. Quite the contrary: it opens a fundamental problem between them that is now "covered" and at the same time referred to by their mutual silence. And it is because of their communicative sensitivity that they "detect a hum of speech" by mutually reflecting the logic of each other's situation and projecting it onto the horizon of their new freedom from society's legal regulations and for their love and a life together in free love.

Schwartzrauber, H.  "The Subversive Muse - E. Whartons 'Souls Belated.'"  EESE, 2002.  Web.  12 Dec. 2010.

"Roman Fever" Discussion

Here are two perspectives for you to consider on "Roman Fever;" feel free to comment on either.

“Since the entirety of the story plays itself out against the backdrop of ‘the great accumulated wreckage of passion and splendor’ in Rome, I am suggesting that Wharton means to put into some relation of the fortunes of civilization and the fortunes of these two families, the Slades and the Ansleys (17). The story insists, first of all, that our own myth of origins -- from which we get all our founding or inaugurating force, our authority -- is inherently arbitrary... Wharton’s fiction, therefore participates in a kind of demystification (destructive) process; both women believe their own inaugural myths about their daughters... Both are wrong about the order of things, and Wharton uncovers a profound emptiness at the heart of history since chance seems to rule.” (685-86)

Bauer, Dale M. “Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever”: A Rune of History.” College English 50.6 (1988): 681-692.

“Just as Alida’s letter is already destroyed before ‘Roman Fever’ begins, so most female writers in Wharton’s fiction are either satirically depicted or dead before the story starts. Moreover, “Roman Fever” makes it terrible clear that Alida’s writing does not belong to her: she plagiarized its plot from the women in Grace’s family, and forged authorship with Delphin’s initials. Alida discovers too late that she cannot control the masculine authorship and authority she has invoked; instead it controls her, even from beyond the grave. Nor can she control her text’s interpretation: Grace is not humiliated by the love letter, as Alida hoped, but treasures its memories for years” (326)

Sweeney, Susan Elizabeth. “Edith Wharton’s Case of Roman Fever.” Wretched Exotic: Essays on Edith Wharton in Europe. New York: P. Lang, 1993. 313–31.

Hello Howell Humanities Students:  Over the next three days, I'll post three topics for discussion, each from a noted literary critic, about Wharton's short fiction.  Your assignment is to react to each post with a BRIEF post of your thoughts.  Feel free to comment about other posts as well.  Here is the first topic which is from Margaret B. McDowell who served as chairperson of the Women’s Studies Program and as associate professor of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa. 

“Her [Wharton's] careful ordering of detail enabled Mrs. Wharton to attain in many of her shorter works a psychological complexity in characterization which would ordinarily be found only in the novel. In her short stories she usually illuminates, rather than resolves, the refractory situations that she subjects to her scrutiny. The characters and events often suggest intonations of the universal and ranges of significance beyond the literal.” (McDowell, p. 85)
“… Edith Wharton examined the role and status of women, the implications of marriage as seen through the eyes of a woman, the relationship between mother and child, and the rapidly changing views about divorce and about liaisons outside of marriage. Though she explored these subjects insistently, she approached the issues from varying angles and arrived at contradictory conclusions. If any consistent pattern of conviction emerges from the stories, which cover almost fifty years, it is that each woman must decide for herself what is best in her own situation … Certainly no American author before 1930 produced such penetrating studies of women who, instead of marrying, decide to risk social ostracism by contracting temporary alliances based on mutual trust and sexual desire.” (McDowell, p. 87)

McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers, 1976.

Happy blogging.