Review: "The Reef" By Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's The Reef was written in 1912 when she was essentially at her very best as a novelist, and I think her powers are quite evident in this engaging tale.  Also, this is a very theatrical story that I personally think would lend itself very well to a stage adaptation.  The book could just as easily have been entitled, The Chateau, as basically three-quarters of the novel takes place within the confines of Mrs Anna Leath's French estate, Givre.

This is the story of romantic relationships, double-standards and consequences among four Americans in Europe just before the First World War, and the entire plot turns on the things said and unsaid among the four protagonists.  Wharton, through the course of the novel, puts the reader squarely inside the mind and emotions of each of the four characters.  Consequently, it becomes hard to say with any certainty that this person is right, or that that person is wrong.  It is simply a "Human Story" and mistakes are made by each in turn, and this reader found it damnably difficult to side with one over the other.  Another element that I found intriguing is that Wharton only gives the reader the barest amount of background information about each of the characters throughout the book, as she wants the reader to focus on and fully experience the emotional crisis and psychological struggle that each is undergoing as the tale plays out.

While devastatingly painful to read at times, The Reef is an insightful portrait of the interactions among the men and women of "Society" at the beginning of the 20th century.  In some respects the moral ambiguity and dilemmas faced by Wharton's characters in The Reef really have not changed all that much--people still fall in love, deception still occurs, and feelings still mean everything.  When done with the book, one can't help but realize that Wharton's title--The Reef--is spot-on.  The challenge that each of us faces as we move through life is to sail carefully, but exuberantly, and avoid crashing on the reefs that will always be perilously close.  I am so glad to have read this and look forward to picking it up again sometime.  I unhesitatingly award this novel four of five stars.

***

The Reef
By Edith Wharton, 1912
Everyman's Library Edition
Hardcover, 290 pp.

Review: "The Touchstone" By Edith Wharton

I just finished reading The Touchstone again, in conjunction with reading Henry James's The Aspern Papers.  I believe that The Touchstone may have been Wharton's first published work of fiction too.

The novella tells the story of Stephen Glennard a youngish gentleman of New York's upper-crust society who is trying to find the financial wherewithal to marry his fiance, Miss Alexa Trent.  Sitting in his club one evening he encounters an advertisement from a Professor Joslin who is looking for any papers and correspondence from the late author, Miss Margaret Aubyn.  Miss Aubyn just happens to be the woman that Glennard had had a long-term intimate relationship with almost up until she died a few years earlier.

In short order, the reader discovers that Glennard has bundles and bundles of very personal letters that he received from Miss Aubyn during the course of their relationship.  He then decides to have them published, and the two-volumes become a huge literary hit with the reading public.

As people begin reading the volumes, particular those in Glennard's circle of friends, he finds out that most people are frankly appalled that anyone would expose these intimate letters to public scrutiny. It is not long before Glennard himself begins to doubt his own motives for publishing the letters, and it begins to negatively impact his own relationship with his now wife, Alexa.  In fact, they've even bought themselves a nice little house on the outskirts of New York City with the riches he's gained by selling the letters.  Even Alexa--who doesn't know that these intimate letters were addressed to Glennard, or that he's sold them--is basically horrified that anyone could be so callous and black-hearted as to open this incredibly personal window into Miss Aubyn's heart and soul.

For much of the novella the story revolves around the struggle and tension between Glennard's desire to do right and provide a meaningful income and life for his new wife, and the increasing guilt he is feeling for his betrayal of his former relationship with Miss Aubyn.  It builds to an important and emotionally powerful climactic scene involving Glennard and Alexa.

I suggest that a reading of Edith Wharton's The Touchstone can be significantly enhanced by first reading Henry James's The Aspern Papers (1888).  The topics of personal privacy, betrayal, trust, and the role of literary biographers and academic research are really front-and-center in both novellas.  Which is perhaps not all that surprising considering that Edith Wharton and Henry James not only knew each other well, but became very good friends.  Finally, The Touchstone truly is a most excellent introduction to the fiction of Edith Wharton, the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, for her novel, The Age of Innocence (1920).

***

The Touchstone
By Edith Wharton, 1900
Aegypan Press
Softcover, 124 pp. 

Review: "The Mill on the Floss" By George Eliot

Upon completion of the The Mill on the Floss, I realized that I had just finished something monumental—a staggeringly amazing literary achievement. This novel, written by ‘George Eliot’ (Mary Anne, or Marian Evans), and first published by Blackwood and Sons in 1860, could have just as easily been titled, “Pride and Prejudice” had not that title been put to use already. Some twenty-four hours after finishing this book, I am coming to the conclusion that Eliot may, in fact, represent the absolute pinnacle of writing in the Victorian Age. This is not, in any way, shape, or form, a “Silly novel by a Lady Novelist” (see Eliot’s essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” Westminster Review, October 1856). This novel is not of the “mind-and-millinery,” “rank-and-beauty,” or of the “enigmatic” species. This is a novel in the finest tradition of Realism, and I can’t help but think that it must have inspired the later Naturalism of Thomas Hardy and his ‘Wessex’ novels.

This book should really be required reading for parents and brothers and sisters. The story of the young Maggie Tulliver, and her relationship with her older brother Tom and her parents is compelling, and is one that we can all relate at so many levels. It warns us that actions, things said, or beliefs instilled upon the young can have profound implications for years to come.

I suppose in some respects that The Mill on the Floss can also be considered to be the bildungsroman of Maggie Tulliver as Eliot clearly focuses on the psychological and moral growth of Maggie, her main protagonist, from when she was a little girl until she has become a young-adult. It is the ability (or inability) of Maggie to adapt to changes in her own life, and the lives of those she loves around her, that provides the main premise of the narrative. In the spirit of full disclosure, I began to fall in love with Maggie early on in the novel, and loved her more with each page that I turned.

In my opinion, Maggie Tulliver is one of the most engaging and endearing heroines that a reader will encounter in Victorian fiction. Eliot’s raven-haired and dark-eyed beautiful creation manages to combine the goodness, sensitivity, and natural curiosity of Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘Molly Gibson;’ the spirit and independence of Charles Dickens’s ‘Bella Wilfur;’ and the wit and humor of Jane Austen’s ‘Elizabeth Bennet.’ Maggie Tulliver has a heart the size of the sun, nearly as bright, and burns just as hotly. She wants to please everyone, all of the time; and it is this propensity to love and be loved that leads to her troubles. Mostly though, Maggie desires more than anything to please her older brother Tom; and, in return, to be unconditionally loved by him.

We see an example of Maggie’s spiritual and emotional maturation in her heart-felt and frank discussion with Stephen Guest, a young man who has fallen head-over-heels in love with her, even though he is essentially ‘promised’ to Maggie’s cousin, Lucy Deane:

“She was silent for a few moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness—

“O it is difficult—life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling—but then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us—the ties that have made others dependent on us—and would have cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in paradise, and we could always see that one being first towards whom… I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I see—I feel it is not so now: there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly—that I must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don’t urge me; help me—help me, because I love you.”

--These are the words of a young woman that has finally found herself, and has reconciled the passionate and intellectual sides of her spirit. Arguably one of the most eloquent and beautiful passages I’ve read in some time.

Finally, like Dickens does with the Thames River in his magnum opus, Our Mutual Friend, Eliot weaves the theme of The Floss, the river that binds together the peoples and the landscape of Maggie’s world, through the novel with her use of metaphor and allusion, and pastoral description. The novel starts with The Floss, and through the course of the book it is always there, relentlessly flowing to the sea. In some respects, The Floss represents the things we say, feelings we have, or actions we take that get away from us; sometimes ‘flowing’ past us, becoming irretrievable and lost forever. Ultimately, it is this connection with The Floss that Eliot masterfully uses to bring her readers to the close of this magnificent novel culminating in the great climax that finally defeats pride and prejudice and brings Maggie the redemption she longs for.

“The Mill on the Floss” is a towering masterpiece—a novel for the ages.