Blogging the Reef: Gaining wisdom

(To read all posts about The Reef click here.)

 Edith Wharton does not spare her female characters, not even the morally admirable ones such as Anna Leath. That is what makes her different from most current fiction. In a current novel handling this subject, George Darrow would be condemned and Anna vindicated even if heartbroken at the end. Wharton doesn't do that.

More than that, the most important theme in the novel is not the moral manipulative George/Morton but a character flaw in Anna. And that flaw has something to do with erotic love.

If we go back to Book 2, we find Anna remembering her youth when she first met George Darrow. She considers some other girls who were involved in sexual scandals and, while thinking them silly girls, still feels inadequate compared to them.

She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardly the same life as herself, and seemingly unaware of her world of hidden beauty, were yet possessed of some vital secret which escaped her. There seemed to be a kind of freemasonry between them; they were wider awake than she, more alert, and surer of their wants if not of their opinions. She supposed they were "cleverer", and accepted her inferiority good-humouredly, half aware, within herself, of a reserve of unused power which the others gave no sign of possessing.

Okay, it's Book 4 and Anna is a widow witha  daughter. She is no longer a virgin.  But notice what hasn't changed. Here she is meeting Sophy at a  point where she still suspects nothing:

She had always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the constraint of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from which fate had so persistently excluded her. There were even moments when she fancied herself vaguely to blame for her immunity, and felt that she ought somehow to have affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come to her. And now, as she sat looking at Sophy Viner, so small, so slight, so visibly defenceless and undone, she still felt, through all the superiority of her worldly advantages and her seeming maturity, the same odd sense of ignorance and inexperience. 

So the mere fact of having sex isn't enough.  The big question is this: Is Anna justified in this feeling of inadequacy? I'd say quite bluntly that she is and, furthermore, that is precisely what this book is about. It is the central theme. Anna fails to be a woman.

My point here is not to let George off the hook. Yes, he has his failings, but the more important failing is Anna's.

And I think we get a very clear picture of what she should be in Sophy, whose name, I remind you again, means wisdom. It's not carnal knowledge that Sophy has that Ann does not. Rather it is an ability to learn from erotic love. (Remember also that Wharton was a huge fan of The Phaedrus.)

Read what Sophy says to George during their encounter in chapter 26. It helps here to know that in French the word aventure, so close to our English word "adventure", is the word used used to describe an affair. When Sophy says "as an adventure", it means something very close to what we might mean in saying "I tried to treat it as just an affair and not love".

He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost exultantly: "Don't for a minute think I'm sorry! It was worth every penny it cost. My mistake was in being ashamed, just at first, of its having cost such a lot. I tried to carry it off as a joke--to talk of it to myself as an 'adventure'. I'd always wanted adventures, and you'd given me one, and I tried to take your attitude about it, to 'play the game' and convince myself that I hadn't risked any more on it than you. Then, when I met you again, I suddenly saw that I had risked more, but that I'd won more, too--such worlds! I'd been trying all the while to put everything I could between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I'd been trying to forget how you looked; now I want to remember you always. I'd been trying not to hear your voice; now I never want to hear any other. I've made my choice--that's all: I've had you and I mean to keep you." Her face was shining like her eyes. "To keep you hidden away here," she ended, and put her hand upon her breast.

Could Anna Leath say such a thing? Could she look back at  a failed love and tell herself that she had paid a price and won more for it? Of course not and that is why she says, in the bit I quoted higher up:

She had always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the constraint of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from which fate had so persistently excluded her.

And she adds:

 There were even moments when she fancied herself vaguely to blame for her immunity, and felt that she ought somehow to have affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come to her. 

Or, as Rimbaud famously put it:

Par délicatesse
J'ai perdu ma vie.

And if we read to the end of Book 4, we get this telling bit of dramatic irony as Anna sees George slipping out of her life:

She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay, a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from the unendurable anguish he had caused her. Then the vision called up another thought: "I shall never know what that girl has known..." and the recoil of pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.

"I shall never know what that girl has known." Anna says more than she realizes. It's not that the romance with George will work. That is precisely the sort of pragmatic concern that has always sunk Anna Leath before. What she has never been able to do is to risk what Sophy risked and she never has had the knowledge that comes—win or fail—from such courage.

She has Book 5 to make it right or fail.