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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
I loved this. My first Wharton novel, though I suppose it's really a novella.
It's so fucked up! I love when books easily challenge my own morals, aka I'm rooting for adultery, and feeling great empathy for the cheaters.
This is a book you can read easily in one sitting, if you carve out a few hours.
It's so fucked up! I love when books easily challenge my own morals, aka I'm rooting for adultery, and feeling great empathy for the cheaters.
This is a book you can read easily in one sitting, if you carve out a few hours.
If it was written by a man, it would be insufferable.
While depicting a non-functioning marriage in need of a divorce is more than welcome (to the heart of this divorcee), it is less so at the expense of one of the participants, in this case (as also often) the wife who gets little characterization beyond “what an awful person.” There's no denying that some people that tend to be awful most of the time do exist (just look at the news), but you get now why I wrote my first comment - if it was a man wielding the pen, it would just feel too much like another middle-aged man bored with their partner, looking for new meat; but in Wharton’s hands, especially considering her own unhappy marriage, speaking through a man allows for distance and understanding of a bad situation, instead of merely living out one’s anger at a wife they cannot stand anymore.
As it is, it works as a sad descent into the horrible fate of a hopeless situation. Wharton builds them up, and then takes them down, each moment a painfully dragging step you cannot avoid taking, into tragedy; because how else could it be? Anything else would be a lie, a fairy tale; and her own life would not allow for that.
And even with the certainty of tragedy looming over the proceedings, you might think that you know where it's going, but you don't; and one could argue it's a tad melodramatic, or even undermining the reality of the more mundane tragedy of missed chances; but I'd argue it drives home furthermore the point of it, and the harsh, careless weight of poverty mixing with rigid society norms, culminating in unhappiness to all and even the best to succumbing to grievances.
Even the aforementioned horrible wife obtains respite in the horribleness of it all, the final chapter of their tale offering a chilling redemption that promises to rewrite the whole character. No, she didn't suddenly become somebody she wasn't, but it becomes clear how difficult it must have been to not be who she was; and the tale is alarming.
Especially if it sparks in you something hitting closer to home, as it did for me; and I couldn't help but be glad I lived in a different society, in a different income bracket. No fairy tale here, no Sunday evening romance; just the misery of the world in full.
While depicting a non-functioning marriage in need of a divorce is more than welcome (to the heart of this divorcee), it is less so at the expense of one of the participants, in this case (as also often) the wife who gets little characterization beyond “what an awful person.” There's no denying that some people that tend to be awful most of the time do exist (just look at the news), but you get now why I wrote my first comment - if it was a man wielding the pen, it would just feel too much like another middle-aged man bored with their partner, looking for new meat; but in Wharton’s hands, especially considering her own unhappy marriage, speaking through a man allows for distance and understanding of a bad situation, instead of merely living out one’s anger at a wife they cannot stand anymore.
As it is, it works as a sad descent into the horrible fate of a hopeless situation. Wharton builds them up, and then takes them down, each moment a painfully dragging step you cannot avoid taking, into tragedy; because how else could it be? Anything else would be a lie, a fairy tale; and her own life would not allow for that.
And even with the certainty of tragedy looming over the proceedings, you might think that you know where it's going, but you don't; and one could argue it's a tad melodramatic, or even undermining the reality of the more mundane tragedy of missed chances; but I'd argue it drives home furthermore the point of it, and the harsh, careless weight of poverty mixing with rigid society norms, culminating in unhappiness to all and even the best to succumbing to grievances.
Even the aforementioned horrible wife obtains respite in the horribleness of it all, the final chapter of their tale offering a chilling redemption that promises to rewrite the whole character. No, she didn't suddenly become somebody she wasn't, but it becomes clear how difficult it must have been to not be who she was; and the tale is alarming.
Especially if it sparks in you something hitting closer to home, as it did for me; and I couldn't help but be glad I lived in a different society, in a different income bracket. No fairy tale here, no Sunday evening romance; just the misery of the world in full.
It filled me with memories of the sweetness and the ache of longing, the joy in the simplicity of tenderness, and the apprehension in the face of the fragility of love itself. Edith shows what happens when love breaks before it really gets started and how that can haunt a person for the rest of their life. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think this is such a beautifully pristine story, befitting its snowy New England setting. With themes of longing, penury and pain it paints a stark portrait of the universal human condition.
so tragic yet so poignant. i should probably re-read this one.
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Melancholy book, sad but short. Great scene setting of New England.
my poor brain……. it felt like a bad bad remake of Zola’s ‘Thérèse Raquin’ to me and i never ever been so slow to read a hundred pages novel ugh