In fall 2004, I took a Modern American Authors class at Missouri State University. We read eight novels that semester; five were written by Edith Wharton. When we were finished, the professor said something like, "It'll be a long time before I teach a class on Edith Wharton again." I believe most of us agreed. However, I feel that I learned a great deal about descriptive writing during that class.
Edith Wharton has the reputation of writing stories about the high society of which she was an integral part. That society can be found in her popular novels, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, etc.
But I found her to be at her strongest when she stepped out of her comfort zone and wrote about the poor and desolate, particularly a handful of characters found in the staple Ethan Frome and my favorite Wharton novel, Summer.
In Summer, there is a scene when the main character Charity travels up "the Mountain" to see her mother, Mary. When she gets there, she learns that her mother is dead. Here is the scene:
"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle in his hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stood before a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay on it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled down about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.
Later in the novel, Wharton describes a scene inside one of the cabins on the Mountain. This simple scene has stuck in my mind since I first read this novel:
CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead mother's body had lain. The room in which she lay was cold and dark and low-ceilinged, and even poorer and barer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthly pilgrimage. On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with two children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled up against her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spread over them, having given the only other blanket to their guest.
Can't you just imagine this scene? How powerful! "On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with two children -- her grandchildren, she said -- rolled up against her like sleeping puppies.
I truly enjoy great narrative, and this is some of the best that I've read. If you get a chance, pick up a copy of Summer. You won't regret it. Online text can be found here.
FYI...Wharton was good friends with Henry James, who I wrote about in an earlier post.
Edith Wharton has the reputation of writing stories about the high society of which she was an integral part. That society can be found in her popular novels, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, etc.
But I found her to be at her strongest when she stepped out of her comfort zone and wrote about the poor and desolate, particularly a handful of characters found in the staple Ethan Frome and my favorite Wharton novel, Summer.
In Summer, there is a scene when the main character Charity travels up "the Mountain" to see her mother, Mary. When she gets there, she learns that her mother is dead. Here is the scene:
"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle in his hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stood before a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay on it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled down about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.
Later in the novel, Wharton describes a scene inside one of the cabins on the Mountain. This simple scene has stuck in my mind since I first read this novel:
CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead mother's body had lain. The room in which she lay was cold and dark and low-ceilinged, and even poorer and barer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthly pilgrimage. On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with two children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled up against her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spread over them, having given the only other blanket to their guest.
Can't you just imagine this scene? How powerful! "On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with two children -- her grandchildren, she said -- rolled up against her like sleeping puppies.
I truly enjoy great narrative, and this is some of the best that I've read. If you get a chance, pick up a copy of Summer. You won't regret it. Online text can be found here.
FYI...Wharton was good friends with Henry James, who I wrote about in an earlier post.
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