Note: I am using the Everyman's Library edition of 1996.
(To read all posts about The Reef click here.)
Many of the critics who have written about this book have puzzled about the title. They point out that the word "reef" doesn't appear even once in this book. So we have a mystery and our first question is, "What is a 'Reef'?" It's a nautical term and it has two senses only one of which applies here.
In that sense a reef is something hard under the surface of the water that is a hazard to navigation that boats and ships may run into. Reefs don't move but they are hard to keep track of and hard or impossible to see. You could think of them as being like little islands that don't quite reach the surface. They are usually rock but they can be of other substances such as coral.
Now Wharton didn't do much in the way of writing by accident. That she calls this book The Reef and then never uses the word is intentional. We are faced with this mystery because she has set it for us to solve. And we get confirmation of this right from the first paragraph.
The other thing that ought to jump out at us about that paragraph is that the syntax is rather odd. Those aren't full sentences. The next paragraph, which consists of one long sentence, makes quite a contrast.
So it's a mystery and it's a modern mystery. At least here at the beginning, this book is all about modern communications transport and cities.
At the same time there is a hint of an ancient mystery in the line:
And the mystery is about Anna, whom we will soon know as Anna Leath. (Although we might, as I Wharton intends, see it as having something to do with all women in a modern world where the roles for them as women have changed.) She is the one who has sent this and our buddy George Darrow is wondering why. He's pretty sure there will be a perfectly good reason for the delay but he also suspects that Anna could have gotten around it if she'd pushed a bit harder. And he is wondering along these lines because this has happened before.
If I could hammer on the "modern" aspect of this a bit, consider how this scene simply could not have happened in Pride and Prejudice. This message is pretty close to instantaneous and the letters of Austen's fiction couldn't create such a conflict whereby someone was already leaving to go visit when it arrived as his train was pulling out.
Of course we should remember that we only have one side of the story. Is Anna also aware of the 'reef"? Well, yes, but we don't know that yet.
Final thought: notice how different this is from Henry James. Bang, right from the first sentence this novel is on theme. The Wings of the Dove isn't like that at all. It's theme teases out slowly over hundreds of pages. In every way, Wharton is a more focused writer. You can see why her books sold so much better than his.
Which leads me to a rather impertinent question: Why do critics prefer James to Wharton? And they do. For all the feminist readjustment whereby female artists have been reassessed versus their male contemporaries, the judgment regarding Wharton and James hasn't moved an inch in the last century. I find that really odd for I think if there is any novelist of this period who deserves the title "The Master" is is she. Whatever else you might say of the two, she is the one who is in complete control of the medium of the novel. He isn't.
(To read all posts about The Reef click here.)
Many of the critics who have written about this book have puzzled about the title. They point out that the word "reef" doesn't appear even once in this book. So we have a mystery and our first question is, "What is a 'Reef'?" It's a nautical term and it has two senses only one of which applies here.
In that sense a reef is something hard under the surface of the water that is a hazard to navigation that boats and ships may run into. Reefs don't move but they are hard to keep track of and hard or impossible to see. You could think of them as being like little islands that don't quite reach the surface. They are usually rock but they can be of other substances such as coral.
Now Wharton didn't do much in the way of writing by accident. That she calls this book The Reef and then never uses the word is intentional. We are faced with this mystery because she has set it for us to solve. And we get confirmation of this right from the first paragraph.
'Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna.'For a reef is nothing but an unexpected obstacle. But we don't have a clue what that obstacle is nor does George Darrow who is the person Anna has sent this message to.
The other thing that ought to jump out at us about that paragraph is that the syntax is rather odd. Those aren't full sentences. The next paragraph, which consists of one long sentence, makes quite a contrast.
All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplace syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry, letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged from his compartment at the pier, and stood facing the wind- swept platform and the angry sea beyond, they leapt out at him as if from the crest of the waves, stung and blinded him with a fresh fury of derision.That sentence also explains why the first paragraph is written the way it is: it's a telegram. Telegrams don't exist anymore so we might miss that this is a very modern thing. Think of it as being a little like a text message. Telegrams were short because you paid for them by the word so people chopped out all the unnecessary words. Text messages are short because people get tired of typing with their thumbs.
So it's a mystery and it's a modern mystery. At least here at the beginning, this book is all about modern communications transport and cities.
At the same time there is a hint of an ancient mystery in the line:
... shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game of the gods of malice ...Keep that in mind for the idea of classical tragedy will be a recurring theme. Not because we are to think of this story as a tragedy but rather so we will see that it is something different. Just like Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, this is a sad story and not a tragedy. The story of Lily Bart was more like a tragedy. This is a huge step forward into something new for Wharton. You could call this Wharton's version of modernism.
And the mystery is about Anna, whom we will soon know as Anna Leath. (Although we might, as I Wharton intends, see it as having something to do with all women in a modern world where the roles for them as women have changed.) She is the one who has sent this and our buddy George Darrow is wondering why. He's pretty sure there will be a perfectly good reason for the delay but he also suspects that Anna could have gotten around it if she'd pushed a bit harder. And he is wondering along these lines because this has happened before.
If I could hammer on the "modern" aspect of this a bit, consider how this scene simply could not have happened in Pride and Prejudice. This message is pretty close to instantaneous and the letters of Austen's fiction couldn't create such a conflict whereby someone was already leaving to go visit when it arrived as his train was pulling out.
Of course we should remember that we only have one side of the story. Is Anna also aware of the 'reef"? Well, yes, but we don't know that yet.
Final thought: notice how different this is from Henry James. Bang, right from the first sentence this novel is on theme. The Wings of the Dove isn't like that at all. It's theme teases out slowly over hundreds of pages. In every way, Wharton is a more focused writer. You can see why her books sold so much better than his.
Which leads me to a rather impertinent question: Why do critics prefer James to Wharton? And they do. For all the feminist readjustment whereby female artists have been reassessed versus their male contemporaries, the judgment regarding Wharton and James hasn't moved an inch in the last century. I find that really odd for I think if there is any novelist of this period who deserves the title "The Master" is is she. Whatever else you might say of the two, she is the one who is in complete control of the medium of the novel. He isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment