What would be expected from the personality of a woman who had an affair with her best friend’s fiance? Certainly not a dull mother who enjoys knitting, as is the case in the short story “Roman Fever.” Edith Wharton effectively makes use of direct and indirect presentation to create two round, yet static characters in her short story to escalate the powerful and surprising climax.
Edith Wharton uses mostly direct presentation to describe Alida Slade and Grace Ansley in the beginning of her short story; “Roman Fever”; however also successfully incorporates indirect presentation to create even more realistic characters. In the first several paragraphs of the story the author tells readers “straight out, by exposition...what the characters are like” (Arp 162); for example, she mentions Mrs. Slade’s “vigorous black eyebrows” (Wharton 1) and “small determined nose”(Wharton 1). The author also divulges that Mrs. Ansley is “far less sure than her companion of
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Slade and Mrs. Ansley create a more intriguing and surprising climax. Both women are ”complex and many-sided” (Arp 163) because of all of the small details the author gives readers. One of the first things that readers learn is that they are upper class, New York American citizens; “two American ladies of ripe but well-cared-for middle age” (Wharton 1). An interesting part of Mrs. Slade we learn about is that she depended on her husband when her young son died; “She had fought through that agony because her husband was there” (Wharton 3). This gives Mrs. Slade a completely different side because previously the reader believes she is confident, independent and sure of herself; as shown by her strong assertions. Without that detail, we might think of Mrs. Slade as flat. If the characters had “only one or two predominant traits” (Arp 163), the ending wouldn’t be nearly as powerful or unexpected; as readers wouldn’t be as connected with and sure of the women’s distinct
In the novella Ethan Frome, the author Edith Wharton uses Mattie Silver as a literary foil to her older cousin, Zenobia (Zeena) Frome. All the action in the book is related by an unnamed narrator, in the third person point of view. As a literary foil, Mattie’s main purpose in the book is to contrast and/or amplify certain features of Zeena, and serve as the catalyst for the plot. Zeena, Ethan Frome’s wife, is prematurely old, sour of temperament and cold as a dead fish. Zeena is as stark and uninviting as the frigid winter landscape in which they live, sharing a loveless marriage with Ethan. Mattie, however, Zeena’s cousin is youthful, sweet in temperament and warm as a summer breeze. Arriving into Ethan’s home, Mattie awakens Ethan’s long dormant spirit.
Juxtaposition is used to put two characters side by side and depict the similarities and the differences of them. Within the novel, Ethan Frome, Zeena and Mattie were two contextual characters whose individuality stood out. By studying Zeena’s and Mattie’s attitudes towards life, their roles as women in the late 19th century, their age, appearance, and their treatment of Ethan and each other throughout the novel, the reader can more deeply comprehend not only the similarities and differences of these two characters, but the function their differences serve as well. A person’s attitude towards life determines how successful they will be in life.
Robert Armitage discusses Edith Wharton’s life in his essay, Edith Wharton, A Writing Life: Marriage, so that the reader can evaluate how Edith's personal experiences affect the characters in Ethan Frome and the novel as a whole. Armitage does not specifically give examples of parallelism between Wharton’s life and her novel, Ethan Frome because his essay only tells the story of Wharton’s life. However, he does believe that Wharton’s stories distinctly reflect “the shape of her life and the movements of her thought” (Armitage).
Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize winning female author whose writing style was mainly affected by her aristocratic upbringing. Growing up Edith Wharton was friends with former President Theodore Roosevelt. The two were often compared and both were said to have been self-made ‘men’. Edith Wharton’s novels were often critically acclaimed until Ethan Frome was published. The novel was said to be cruel and violent by critics and casual readers. In my opinion, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a great book that reveals the harsh realities of failed relationships hanging on by a thread combined with the struggle of being poverty stricken. For my original piece, I will write a poem about Edith Wharton’s failed marriage that lasted 28 years, as if I were Edith Wharton after her divorce from Edward Wharton. I chose to do a report on Edith Wharton because she was a female writer that believed women were just as capable as men during a time when men were seen as superior in every aspect to women, and also because she achieved much more than most male writers of her time. I believe Edith Wharton’s aristocratic upbringing had the main effect on her writing style.
From a reader’s standpoint, how a character develops throughout a story is one of the most intriguing parts of reading. In Susan Glaspell's A Jury of her Peers, the narrator, Mrs. Hale, obsesses over how Minnie Wright changes since she was a girl. Similarly, in Everyday Use by Alice Walker, the narrator awaits her daughter’s arrival, to find that she is radically different from before. One of the core reasons for these changes in the characters are the relationships they are a part of. The two characters’ significant others each have a unique influence on the returning characters (Wangero and Minnie).
Historically, women have been treated as second class citizens. The Napoleonic Code stated that women were controlled by their husbands and cannot freely do their own will without the authority of their husband. This paper shows how this is evident in the "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin and " A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. In both stories, the use of literary elements such as foreshadowing, symbolism, and significant meaning of the titles are essential in bringing the reader to an unexpected and ironic conclusion.
“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.” These eternal words spoken in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather reflect the importance and prevalence of family allegiances. These allegiances transcend many different cultures, societies and environments. Every society has its own “Fredo”: the social outcast whose decisions make him or her the center of attention in society, and whose family allegiances complicate everything. We can see such a prototype for a character in Countess Olenska, the main character in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Countess Olenska is the black sheep of her family because she is considered foreign, and the complicated decisions she faces often
In “ Roman Fever”, Mrs. Slade represented determinism in the duration of the story through her jealousy and similar emotions. Her thoughts and actions in the story towards her lifelong friend has traces of jealousy and bewilderment throughout the story. For example when reminiscing on the days of their youth in Rome, she realized that, “ There was no one of whom she had less right to think unkindly than of Grace Ansley. Would she never cure herself of envying her!” (Wharton 6). Mrs. Slade talks about how her life is boring and now that her husband has passed away, her life is even more dreary. She envious of the type of daughter
Ansley, in an attempt to rid her away and have her catch Roman fever . Destruction in the forms of love, betrayal, and jealously develop a metaphorical form of Roman fever in Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade. Roman fever burns in Mrs. Ansley’s desire for Delphin, Mrs. Slade’s fiancé, thus Mrs. Slade figuratively catches the disease causing her to fester with jealously towards Mrs. Ansley.
Wharton portrays Grace and Alida having certain peculiar comparisons. Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade appear to reach the realization after remaining friends for several years now, they scarcely
"Roman Fever" at first strikes the reader as the simple, rather dull story of two middle aged women sitting on a veranda. The inactiveness of the situation appears to be evident in Mrs. Slade's comment, "Well, I don't see why we shouldn't just stay here", reflecting
“Roman Fever” is a short story written by Edith Wharton in 1934. The story is about two old friends Alina Slade and Grace Ansley reconnecting. Alina and Grace run into each other while on a trip to Rome with their daughters. The two women grew up in Manhattan and were childhood friends. A romantic rivalry led Alina to get feelings of jealousy and hatred against Grace. In the first part of the story, the two women talk about their daughters and each other's lives. Eventually, Alina reveals a secret about a letter written to Grace on a visit to Rome long ago. The letter was addressed from Alina’s fiancé, Delphin, inviting Grace to meet at the Colosseum. Alina had written the letter, to get Grace out of the way of the engagement by disappointing her when Delphin didn’t show up. Grace is upset at this revelation, but reveals that she was not left alone at the Colosseum. She had responded to the letter, and Delphin went to meet her. Alina eventually states that Grace shouldn’t pity her because she won by marring Delphin while Grace had nothing but a letter Delphin didn't even write. Then, Grace reveals that she had Barbara, Grace’s daughter, with Delphin. “Roman Fever” uses a lot of dramatic irony and has many events that contribute to thematic conflict. Wharton uses the letter Alina writes to Grace to trigger all the deception between them, which shows readers that when people are being deceitful with one another nobody wins. Alina sends the letter to Grace to get her out of the picture, but it gives Grace the chance at Delphin that she wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and Grace takes advantage by writing back to Delphin without Alina’s knowledge. Both characters are keeping secrets about their relationships with Delphin and they both think that they won when neither of them did.
The plot of Edith Wharton’s novella “Roman Fever” is straightforward with a consciously casual setting. Words in Wharton’s work are careful and calculated, each paragraph requires an in-depth scrutiny of content from their original context. In ways “Roman Fever” encourages readers to dig through the advanced syntax in search of the conveyed messages. Hence, the story focuses mainly on Mrs. Ansley's knitting and its significance in the novella. When the author addresses Mrs. Ansley's "twist of crimson silk"(69), the descriptive imagery is intentional in the sense that knitting symbolizes Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade’s relationship and foreshadows the dramatic revelations later in the story. The use of frame story to structure the narrative of their ill-matched friendship illustrates the author’s intent to invoke thought and ideas in the reader's naïve minds. Thus, although knitting is an unconscious habit of Mrs. Ansley, it is actually significant because it is an attempt to weave back the disrupted relationship between the two friends. Hence, knitting as a “crimson” alludes to the intensely passionate love and closure that blinds the two from truly understanding each other and gives a glimpse of the unstable nature within the upper middle class in society.
“The two ladies, who had been intimate since childhood, reflected how little they knew each other”. This is how, author, Edith Wharton shows the relationship of two characters, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, in the short story “Roman Fever.” These two women who are supposed to be friends, led envious lives of each other, and because of the way they lived they were very contrasting and conflicting characters. In the end, I believe Mrs. Slade was guiltier for her actions and in fact the whole incident would have never happened if it weren’t for her.
One could look through the enticing piece of literature that is Jane Eyre through a variety of lenses, two significant lenses being mythological and autobiographical. Charlotte Bronte creates an imaginative plot line that encaptures her readers and contributes to the essence of her work as a whole. Bronte combines the lenses of mythology and autobiography not only to appeal to her readers but to balance out the fairy-tale like events with realistic and real-life issues.