Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton

One of the categories in the Back to the Classics challenge I'm participating in this year is "Classic Short Stories."  I hadn't read very many short story collections prior to this, but I'm always up for expanding my boundaries as a reader.  As July is my month to read works by my favorite authors, I decided that Edith Wharton's short story collection Roman Fever would fit in nicely here.  Wharton has been one of my favorite authors since I read Ethan Frome in high school.  This feeling was reinforced when I read The House of Mirth in college (still the only classic novel that has made me shed actual tears) and The Age of Innocence last year. I happened to pick up Roman Fever at a used bookstore a while back, so I figured that now was the time to dust it off, revisit Wharton, and cross a category off my classics challenge.  

Roman Fever contains 8 stories, starting with the eponymous "Roman Fever," followed by the wryly humorous "Xingu" and "The Other Two."  The stories take a rather serious turn after that with "Souls Belated," "The Angel at the Grave," "The Last Asset," "After Holbein," and "Autres Temps..."  Each story is a little snapshot of upper class American life in the later years of the nineteenth century, with a special focus on women's issues of the day.  All of the stories are masterfully written and thought-provoking.  I was surprised that I loved this little collection as much as I did.  I was expecting a group of short stories to be a bit of a throwaway read since they are only around 30-40 pages each.  I was pleased to find that despite their short length, the stories contained well-developed characters, interesting plots and complex themes.   

Edith Wharton is a remarkable person for many reasons, but she is probably best known for her ability to artfully lampoon the privileged, upper class society that she grew up in.  Through her writing, she points out the hypocrisy and inherent emptiness of the lives of the wealthy, and the plight of women who are trapped in its oppressive system of manners and morals.  The stories in Roman Fever are no exception to this. They may be short, but they still explore these issues and make the reader sympathize with many of the characters.

For example, Wharton tackles the topic of how divorce affects the lives of women during the late nineteenth/early twentieth century in several of these stories.  This was a bit of an odd period for couples seeking a divorce. Women had the right to get divorced relatively easily in a legal sense, but struggled mightily with the social ramifications of the practice.  Despite divorce becoming more and more common, women who actually obtained one were looked down upon and sometimes shut out of society, especially if they didn't remarry.  For example, in "Souls Belated," the heroine, Lydia, obtains a divorce from her husband because she has fallen in love with another man.  She doesn't wish to marry again; she wants to be free from the chains of matrimony for a while.  However, societal expectations force to to sneak around if she wants to spend time with her new love as an unmarried woman, which is exhausting emotionally for her.  As the story progresses, she realizes that her divorce has freed her from one cage only to send her straight to another.  She must marry her new lover if she wants a shot at a normal life.  She's trapped. 

In another story, "Autres Temps...", Mrs. Lidcote flees America after her divorce, as she can't bear being shut out of society and cut off from all of her old friends.  She returns to New York for a visit when her daughter, Leila, writes to tell her that she has divorced her first husband and is about to remarry.  Time has passed since Mrs. Lidcote left her country in shame, and public attitudes towards divorce have somewhat shifted.  She arrives in a city that accepts her daughter's situation, more or less. However, Mrs. Lidcote's old friends still won't forgive her for her past divorce, carried out in a time where it was less acceptable. Society won't revise their original opinions of her, and she leaves the country again, not wanting to harm her daughter's reputation.

I found these stories to be clever, ironic, and deeply thought-provoking.  I appreciate that Wharton, through her beautiful writing, provides a window into the trials that women living during this time period endured. An honest, realistic, female perspective is often missing from classic novels, as the writing of the past is so dominated by men.  While I enjoy reading old books, I often wish feminist issues could be explored more deeply in them.  This is what Wharton provides. Echoes of the sexism she writes about persist in American society to this day, of course.  It's interesting to step backwards in time and see the origins of these attitudes.

Roman Fever was a great collection of stories.  Each one was a little adventure back to the past and a moving look at how things worked for women in America at the turn of the century.  Wharton's writing feels honest and realistic, and she drew me in from the very first story (which contains quite a fun, shocking ending).  This novel was a joy to read and only further cemented my deep and abiding love for this unique and excellent writer. I can't wait to explore her other works.