This section really struck me:
“Yes—and afterward?
Well—what? and what did this new question mean? Afterward: why, of course, there was the startled puzzled surrender to the incomprehensible exigencies of the young man to whom one had at most yielded a rosy cheek in return for an engagement ring; there was the large double-bed; the terror of seeing him shaving calmly the next morning, in his shirt-sleeves, through the dressing room door; the evasions, insinuations, resigned smiles and Bible texts of one's Mamma; the reminder of the phrase "to obey" in the glittering blur of the Marriage Service; a week or a month of flushed distress, confusion, embarrassed pleasure; then the growth of habit, the insiduous lulling of the matter-of course, the dreamless double slumbers in the big white bed, the early morning discussions and consultations through that dressing room door which had once seemed to open into a fiery pit scorching the brow of innocence.”
Any thoughts on Wharton's depiction of marriage, sex, passion?
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That passage is beautifully written. It made me think immediately of something I found on Wharton while I was looking for something about Henry James on the NY Times Web site.
ReplyDeleteShe also came to resent the repression and emotional aridity of her society and, in particular, the way it denied women both education and opportunity. Wharton was privately tutored and never formally went to school. Like John Ruskin, probably the only other great writer to be so ill informed, she literally did not know the facts of life when she married. When she approached her mother on the eve of her wedding and asked if there was anything she should know, the imperious Mrs. Jones impatiently remarked that surely she had noticed the difference between male and female statues. (Wharton didn't have a satisfactory sexual experience until she was 45 and, while living in Paris, embarked upon an affair with a married man; it was a discovery, she wrote later, that was sufficient ''to irradiate a whole life.'')
I also found that passage striking, and poignant. I'm glad you shared that insight, Kim - it makes the whole "night before the wedding" scene with Tina much more meaningful.
ReplyDeleteAbout your question, Erin, about Wharton's depiction of marriage and passion. At one level, I thought James Ralston seemed to represent "marriage" and Clem Spender seemed to represent "passion." Delia went for the traditional route, and Charlotte chose the nontraditional, but neither of them could have both.
I know that's a great oversimplification, but I wondered whether anyone else saw it that way.
Kim, that is amazing! With the recurring depressing marriage themes in Wharton's work, I'm sure her personal experience was a great influence.
ReplyDeleteShanxi, I agree with you about Clem as a symbol of passion and Jim as a symbol of marriage (also respectable society). Delia certainly has some longings, if not regrets, about her early choices.
Yeah, how sad. It makes you wonder what her writing would have been like had she had a "satisfying sexual experience" (and presumably love experience) before the age of 45. Better? Worse? Surely it would have been different, since her writing deals so much with domestic relationships.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Erin, immediately after that passage you cited, she writes:
And then, the babies; the babies who were supposed to "make up for everything," and didn't —though they were such darlings, and one had no definite notion as to what it was that one had missed, and that they were to make up for.
That stood out to me, since this was a story about motherhood. So much of a woman's identity was tied up in being a mother. Her body was to be kept "pure" so her husband (who was most certainly "impure") could enjoy it as his own sexual playground, then it became a baby-maker, and it wasn't until a woman was in her 40s or 50s that she could really lay claim to her physical person!
Delia didn't enjoy her own kids as much as she enjoyed Tina, I think, because she CHOSE to have Tina. The other two, though she loved the "darlings," sprang rather unthinkingly out of marital obligation. But Tina she chose. And Tina was a kindred spirit — but one who, unlike Delia, had the nerve to choose passion, to not settle into an existence of unrequited desire.
Delia could yield to that vision of requited love from which her imagination had always turned away. She had made her choice (Ralston, not Clem) in youth, and she had accepted it in maturity; and here in this bridal joy, so mysteriously her own, was the compensation for all she had missed and yet never renounced.
I think Shanxi spelled out the division perfectly. Even if she had not yet found it herself, Wharton knew the difference about love and duty or would not have been able to spell out the nuances that made Tina's choices so enchanting and destiny so important to Delia.
ReplyDeleteI love that passage. It's two-pronged -- to spell out the dutiful role Delia took instead of the love she denied herself and to poke at that Victorian secrecy that shrouded sex and pregnancy. You could almost picture the mystified bride feeling wounded on her wedding night: "So THAT'S what he wanted."
Did you notice how Delia doesn't refer to the children by name in the beginning, either? Just little girl and boy and their darling outfits. Like dolls.
ReplyDeleteYeah, good point. It's like the children are just objects necessary to complete the picture of the proper high-society family.
ReplyDelete