Read The Reef With an Introduction By Louis Auchincloss Edith Wharton Books
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Read The Reef With an Introduction By Louis Auchincloss Edith Wharton Books
"As always, Wharton is excellent. She is playing with themes already introduced in The House of Mirth but to a far different end. The concluding chapter is unexpected and a bit curious."
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The Reef With an Introduction By Louis Auchincloss Edith Wharton Books Reviews :
The Reef With an Introduction By Louis Auchincloss Edith Wharton Books Reviews
- "The Reef" is a metaphor for the tangled place people sometimes find themselves stuck in between dry land (the norms of the day) and the deep blue sea (your own emotions/feelings.) Middle-aged upper-class man re-encounters an upper-class old flame newly widowed, and wants to go to Paris to cultivate marriage to her. She writes and tells him not to come yet--no reason given. He goes anyway and is attracted to a pretty, but poor, lower-class, 24 year old; and since he's pissed off at his old flame, he wines, dines, and yes, does the wild thing with the young lady. Old flame eventually contacts him and he hurries to her side. A BIG problem then arises, because the young lady has been hired as the governess of the old flame's child and that spoils wedding plans. And if that's not bad enough, the governess becomes engaged to the old flame's step-son. WHAT TO DO? Of course, all this is written in Wharton's beautiful style using highly elegant language without ever mentioning any words that go to the very "root" the problem. Only thing that bothered me was that the young lady is held accountable for losing her virtue, but the man who took it does not appear to be just as responsible--probably okay as far as men were judged in that day and age. What a hoot of a read! Of course, a really big deal of the whole matter is made with much ado. Highly recommend. See if you can figure out the ending.
- Edith Wharton (1865-1937 in France) was born into a wealthy New York socially acceptable family in the last year of the Civil War. She spent much of her youth and life in France. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Price doing so in 1920 for her masterpiece The Age of Innocence. She was wealthy but had a barren and unhappy marriage though she did have lovers.
One of her best friends was the master novelist Henry James (1843-1916), Their friendship was platonic but his writing style and themes are closely related to those of Wharton. Both are concerned with upper class Americans living in Europe,love affairs and psychological probing of the depths of a character's soul.
The Reef is not well known to the general reading public but should be! The novel was published in 1912 when Wharton was at the top of her literary game. The story is simple. George Darwin has revived his love interest in a formal girlfriend from New York; Anna Summers. She is now Mrs. Leath a widower living in France. She has a young daughter Effie and grown stepson named Owen. While on the way to visit her George meets Sophy Viner. He is 37 years old while Sophy is much younger. She is leaving a bad situation as an employee in a rich woman's home. The two visit Paris together and have a brief affair. Later she shows up at the home of Mrs. Leath upsetting plans for George and Anna to marry. Owen, the stepson, has meanwhile become engaged to Sophy. What a mess! The plot explores the various feelings of each of the characters and is resolved in a surprising way. Wharton is great in her beautiful sketching of the sea and landscape of France. The reef refers to the emotional deep blue sea characters experience within themselves and the polite society in 1912.
I am a big fan of Edith Wharton and love her novels as published in the delightful Everyman series! For pure reading pleasure enjoy this excellent novel! - Little-known work with a squirrelly ending. Nevertheless, like all of Edith Wharton's work, it was engaging from beginning to end. My take was that it was an exploration of the consequences of premarital sex in the late Gilded Age. Though the references to sexual relations were oblique, to say the least, I think Wharton got the point across that she was talking about "knowing "someone in a biblical sense. However, she couldn't make up her mind about what moral lesson she was trying to convey. She might've run herself into a rat hole and not been able to decide herself. And some of the ideas in the book were highly conventional and annoying, but true to the spirit of the age. For example, Wharton placed far less emphasis on the loss of the woman's virtue because she was not an upper-class woman anyway. Instead she concentrated on the social consequences for a man who engages in premarital relations with a woman from a lower social order and the effect it may have on a prospective upper class bride if it becomes known to her. But in the end, it seems that Wharton couldn't work out what she thought the consequences should be. She seems to be leaning towards saying that an upper-class woman might accept the past sexual dalliances of her future husband, but it would negatively affect the quality of their marriage forever, especially if the dalliance occurred no long before the betrothal. Actually, the consequences might be the same today.
Wharton was a specially brave for taking on this topic during her time. She's a great writer with a lot to say and the stories she uses to make her points are always special. - This book is superb, a tightly wound story of love on the rise, love endlessly complicated. It involves erotic matters too, rather more directly than in her other books. Edith Wharton was a pioneer in many aspects of fiction, but who knew she had it in her to spell it out?
- The large size and normal print take some getting used to but I have found books in this format to be very handy to slip into a back pack for travel.
- Enchanting and engrossing story telling. Effortless perspective changes. Vivid descriptions of mood and place. Great read.
- As always, Wharton is excellent. She is playing with themes already introduced in The House of Mirth but to a far different end. The concluding chapter is unexpected and a bit curious.
- This was a beautiful read. Perhaps the most similar in style of all Wharton's books to works by Henry James, this psychological exploration of human sexual relationships and their consequences is arresting, thought-provoking and fascinating. I highly recommend this book to disciplined readers.
