Thursday, March 1, 2012

Blogging The Reef: Working at love

(To read all posts about The Reef click here.)
Before plunging into book three, I want to talk about two traps that I think have led so many people to misunderstand this book. The two are related:
  1.  The first mistake is to read this book as if it were a Jamesian book. Right from the beginning all sorts of people, including Henry James himself, have read this book as Wharton emulating James. In fact, the exact opposite is what is happening. Edith Wharton disliked all of James' later fiction and hated The Wings of the Dove. It is better to read this book as her refutation of that novel than any imitation of "the Master".
  2. The second mistake is to read Anna Leath as a spokesperson for Edith Wharton. Yes, her life and her marriage somewhat resemble Wharton's but, given what we now know about Wharton's affair with Morton Fullerton, the resemblances between that relationship and the one that takes place here between George Darrow and Sophy Viner are just a s striking. Yes, Sophy comes from a different social background than Wharton but she had every reason not to make it easy for readers to make any autobiographical inferences between Sophy and an affair that she herself had had.
The two issues are related.

If I might stick to the autobiographical issues for a moment, we might also consider that both Merton Densher and George Darrow are based on Morton Fullerton. And, knowing that, it is easy to see why Wharton would have some non-literary reasons for hating The Wings of the Dove. I don't mean that she would have read that story as a portrayal of her affair with Fullerton but there are certain similarities that would have caused her to be outraged at the moral conclusions James draws from the story where Merton/Morton is the one to make the great moral renunciation. Comparing the story of Merton-Kate-Milly to her own experiences with the man and the odd love triangle with Morton's cousin, it's not hard to see how she would be determined to retell the story and get the moral facts straight.

I was searching around the web and found a review of a collection of letters that featured this excerpt of letter that Wharton sent to Morton. Reading it, I think we might see certain similarities between Edith and Sophy. Remember that this letter was written at the height of her infatuation and the novel written looking back after she was over him:
Pascal’s terrible “il faut de l’adresse pour aimer” [“it takes skill to love”!] has a noble side if it means the exercise of tact, insight, sympathy, self-effacement; but it is the most sordid of counsels if it appeals to the instinct to dole out, dissemble, keep in suspense, in order to prolong a little a feeling that hasn’t enough vitality to survive without such aids.—There would have been the making of an accomplished flirt in me, because my lucidity shows me each move of the game—but that, in the same instant, a reaction of contempt makes me sweep all the counters off the board & cry out:—“Take them all—I don’t want to win—I want to lose everything to you!"—But I pause, remembering you once told me that, on this topic, I serve up the stalest of platitudes with an air of triumphant discovery!—
First, the translation of the French phrase provided above by Louis Aunchicloss misses a bit of nuance. To be sure, when Pascal says we need "l'adresse" to love that does me we need skill. But it is important to see that "l'adresse" can mean skill as in to be shrewd and calculating.

Knowing that, it's easier, I think, to see why Wharton calls this epigram "terrible" and "the most sordid of counsels". But was she right to do so? It certainly sounds nobler to say that "tact, insight, sympathy, self-effacement" are what love requires rather than to "dole out, dissemble, keep in suspense, in order to prolong a feeling". However, if you'll let me be a disgusting pig of a boy for a moment, I'd like to remind everyone that what Morton and Edith had was a sexual affair and that the first set of virtues seem a little less enticing and the second set downright awesome when you are talking about going to a hotel room and having sex. The temptation is to cruelly think, "No wonder he tired of her."

And we might also note that however good it made Edith feel to think and feel and write,  "I want to lose everything to you!" the problem here isn't that this thought of hers is just a stale platitude, it's a selfish behaviour. Erotic love requires effort and all the things that Wharton here derides as  are actually very good advice. What a bore it would be to be stuck with a woman who lazily clung to sense of self-justification that comes with thinking oneself tactful, insightful, sympathetic and self effacing and never made the effort or too the risk that would prolong a feeling.

And that remark about serving up stale platitudes with an air of triumphant discovery, it's not hard to image George Darrow saying that of Sophy at the end of their affair when he has lost interest in her. Darrow loves her excitement and enthusiasm for a while but eventually he loses that and she becomes something else to him. Much more about that in Book 3.

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