Wes:
Having finished The Reef a couple of weeks ago, it has
been difficult for me to sit down and write my impressions of this novel after
such a hiatus. From now on I will try to write the post up as soon as possible
afterwards. I guess this is one of the symptoms of old age – the mind loses
track of details needed to fill out one’s considerations about a story like
this one. The Reef by Edith Wharton
is a quite interesting story about love and hymeneal loyalties at the end of
the Victorian era.
George Darrow is a
young American diplomatic staffer who has rekindled his first love after
meeting Anna Leath at a diplomatic function in London. Though widowed with a
child and step-son, she is relatively well off, living in France, and they both
appear to have fallen back into a loving relationship that was interrupted some
12 years before in America when they were children. Now they plan to marry but
Darrow is much disturbed when he obtains leave to meet her in France and gets a
sudden letter from her stating there are “unexpected obstacles” and not to come
visit for at least a fortnight. Not knowing what to do with his time, he meets
an interestingly vivacious woman, Sophy Viner, at Dover, and they end up having
an affair for some days in Paris as Darrow waits for word on when he can come
to meet Anna. George has no long term designs on Sophy, he merely saw
repression in her that generated “pity she inspired (that) made Darrow long to
fill her few free hours to the brim.”
Forced after his
leave to return to work, he finally gets to visit the Anna’s estate at Givré
some months later. The plot thickens when he is shocked to find that Sophy has
now been hired as governess for Anna’s daughter, Effie, and it really thickens
when later the reader discovers that her brash and immature step-son, Owen, is
secretly engaged to Sophy, a factor which is likely to cause much dissention
with the mother-in-law, Madame de Chantelle, who will likely want better for
her grandson. Anna promises her step-son she will defend his suit to her
mother-in-law. Meanwhile, George wonders whether Sophy should be left with
Effie while George and Anna move to Argentina and whether she is good enough
for Owen. He also has to hide the fact that he and Sophy had a tryst after he
had proposed to Anna. His feelings for Sophy at this point are summed up in
this sentence, “The bare truth, indeed, was that he had hardly thought of her
at all, either at that time or since, and that he was ashamed to base his
judgment of her on his meager memory of their adventure.”
As one can predict,
Darrow tries to wean Sophy away from Owen and hide their relationship but is
observed by the youth in his secretive discussions with Sophy. The entire
affair is discovered and the relationships blow up under the Victorian ethos
that an affair is a great and unforgivable shame to the woman and a minor
misadventure or character flaw in the man. Anna vacillates between her new
distrust of George and her love for him. Much of the second half of the book is
absorbed with Anna’s dilemma on how she can build a marriage severely inhibited
by her distrust. They break up and separate for a while and have conversations
where neither he nor she can articulate what they really feel. A good synopsis
of her feelings is the following when George wants her to tell him whether he
should leave and both take a hiatus in their relationship:
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. ‘Good-bye,’ she said.
Sophy also found
the situation unendurable and decided to leave and does. Ultimately, we find
she has gone to India with her former employer from whom she originally fled to
Paris and whose inn was where George and she first met when he was a lodger and
she a servant. Anna and George get back together when George takes her to his
room and she discovers that he really does love her and the 800 lb. gorilla in
the room was her own distrust of him. She reasons that when they become
intimate there “will be no room for any doubts between us.” This is essentially
what happens. So I guess the Victorian ethos of the effects of illicit affairs
really did win out in the end. George did not suffer a devastating and fatal
blow by his actions but Sophy, on the other hand, was banished to the outer
realm.
The extensive
musings over Anna’s and George’s feelings were the highlights of the book for
me. Just about every aspect of Anna’s deep feeling of betrayal and distrust
were analyzed by the author as well as George’s rationale that his short affair
was a fling largely caused by his doubt whether Anna’s really wanted to marry
him. He really loved her and searched a way to show it to her to alleviate her
despair. The book’s detailed analysis reminded me of Leonid Andreyev’s short
stories The Seven that were Hanged
where every conceivable fear and aspect of death by hanging are explicitly and
excruciatingly discussed. They say this book is autobiographical so I’m sure
something similar to Anna’s despair was felt by Edith Wharton at some point in
her life.
One unresolved
issue is why the book was called The Reef
in the first place. That word never appears in the whole book. I looked it
up and it is either an underwater ridge of sand or rocks at or near the surface
or the part of a sail that the sailor can pull in or let out to change the wind
effects on the ship. I can only surmise that the reef was the affair that
wrecked or threatened to wreck the subsequent lives of the characters in the
book. Overall, this was a good read and I rate this book as a 4 on my scale of
1-10 (1 as best).
Allison:
“What are you
reading?” is a question that bounces between booksellers almost competitively.
Woe to the dry spell, or a binge on books in the Self-Help section, because no
one wants to sincerely answer their peers with When Panic Attacks or The
Easy Way to Quit Smoking yet again (although were you in need of such books, I highly recommend both, even if
they must be read thirty to thirty-five times for success). Worse, perhaps, are
the parenting books I’ve been noodling through for the past few weeks. “What
are you reading?” “Oh, you know, pseudo-scientific evidence that I am heinous
monster, inflicting irreparable damage to my child’s delicate psyche—and you?”
What a relief it
was to be able to answer this question instead with a sophisticated shrug, “Just
a little Edith Wharton.”
“Oh Edith,” all
my bookselling friends sigh. “Isn’t she wonderful?”
“Um. Yes?”
I bet she is
wonderful. There were so many wonderful things about The Reef, but I doubt it’s the place to start. I started asking my colleagues
what they liked about her books and they said her writing was like Jane Austen
but snarkier, that her pointed commentary on manners of the day rivaled Henry
James. James comparisons are textbook. The
Reef in particular deals with strikingly similar topics as another of our
book club books, Daisy Miller, written
by James himself. James’ Daisy
embodied an experimental rebellion in which young women of a certain status and
class choose to entertain the company of men without chaperones, and with full
disregard of reputation. Daisy is studied, through the eyes of our man Winterbourne,
a would-be suitor—if he weren’t so casually and bewilderingly rebuffed by
Daisy. Daisy is either naively, or intentionally asexual with Winterbourne.
This is the crux of James’ story—does or doesn’t Daisy know the danger she is provoking
by not following the traditional rules of courtship? One of the triumphs of Daisy Miller is that because we, the
reader, are only situated with Winterbourne’s imperfect observations, we only
know Daisy through his particular (male) gaze. The conflict lives inside
Winterbourne and Daisy remains free and unencumbered by even James’ judgement.
James doesn’t try to answer why Daisy behaves as she does, only how
Winterbourne comes to think she
behaves thus.
Likewise, the
enigmatic woman, Sophy, of Wharton’s The
Reef is left untethered to her own point-of-view. Why Sophy is who she is, is only explained
through the descriptions of Darrow and Anna who belong to a wealthy leisure
class. Sophy is lower working class, a servant in Anna’s house, in fact,
governess to her nine-year-old daughter. This distinction alone makes her an
unsuitable bride for Anna’s step-son, Owen, according to the older generation—Owen’s
grandmother. (This also presents an awkward logistical situation—when Sophy
becomes Anna’s daughter-in-law it is assumed she will also remain under her
employment as the governess. Allowed into the family, but only so much…) The
problem with marrying a blue collar is that anyone who has had to work to
survive has been left vulnerable to all manner of unsavory experiences. BUT! No
one suspects that Anna’s fiancé, distinguished Mr. Darrow, might be the source
of Sophy’s most scandalous history.
Let us be frank.
Sophy’s social missteps are dated, the outrage inspired, almost silly, by
contemporary customs. But, the pain and confusion caused by Darrow’s diversion—Ah!
Here in lies the meat of the novel. The lengths he goes to conceal, his
frustration with guilt and justification, and the mental banter Anna entertains,
her frantic back and forth of what she can forgive versus forget—all of this is
timeless, the universal innards of romantic heartache. And it is depicted with
agonizing accuracy. Who among us hasn’t asked themselves, what will I endure to
be loved? How much can I love that which hurts?
But back to
Sophy, because Wharton is known for her social criticism above all else. What I
found most interesting about this book is Darrow’s attempts to sum up the drive
of Sophy, even as his own lived experiences are insufficient. But Darrow will
try. Darrow thinks he understands how Sophy’s class complicates her prospects.
In an attempt to both exonerate himself with Anna, and explain why Sophy should not be invited into this family, and justify why he would have gifted
the pitiable wretch with a scandalous week of intimacy, Darrow describes Sophy’s
life as somehow more life—more hardship,
more passion, more stake, more filth, more intensity—just more. Anna could
never understand, Darrow says, because she hasn’t lived. Darrow explains this to Anna, with a qualifier that maybe
one day, with a little more experience, Anna might understand (what, is unclear),
like Sophy does. “When?” I wonder. Certainly not after marriage to Darrow’s
incredibly boring self.
Anna almost
falls for it. Almost, except of course, Anna
has lived.
For example,
Anna has been married and widowed. Darrow has not. Anna (I think she is a couple
years older than Darrow) was the second wife of an already widowed man who had
a son by his previously alive wife (depicted in the novel so breathtakingly as
a large gilded painting shut up in a library that no one but Anna visits during
the marriage). Anna bore a child, she developed a significant, if not motherly
relationship with her step-son, Owen. She navigated a marriage, she experienced
the death of a spouse, whether beloved or not, the qualifications are scarcely
important to my point. She continues to live in a house very much governed by
the matriarchal mother of her dead husband.
This is life,
this is life despite its padding by wealth and relative safety. Anna has lived.
It’s Anna’s life, in fact, that Darrow longs to
lead. He wants desperately to be her husband. To sit at the fire and take walks
in the rain, and all the other boring things he laments when Anna says, “no.” What Darrow is doing is romanticizing Sophy’s poverty, while trivializing Anna’s
incarcerating wealth in a loveless, bleak marriage. It’s standard patriarchy,
really. These women, he depicts as merely products of their environment rather
than active participants, but it is Wharton, after all, who is telling the
story. For all of Anna’s waffling, all of Sophy’s pining, in the end, it is the
women who win. Despite Darrow’s markedly manipulative efforts, they take charge
of their fates by cutting him out of the equation—and disrupting his gross
misinterpretation of their lives.
After writing
this review, I think I like this book more than I initially thought. I’ve grown
up writing with the understanding that even women writers cannot help but to
write from under the influence of the male point-of-view, because that is the “standard,”
the base from which we learn to craft. Edith Wharton’s greatest influence and
contemporary is a not a woman, it’s Henry James, yet The Reef takes care of the interior of her women characters in a
way that James (using only Daisy Miller
as reference) was wise enough not to attempt.
I rate this a 3 on Dad’s scale of 1-10 (1 being highest), even though it was not much fun to
read. Wharton’s descriptions often
jumped off the page and hit me in the gut as not only explicitly identifiable
in my own life, but perhaps the single best way of conveying it. Ask me what it’s
like to experience road rage while walking down the street with an umbrella in
New York City during a rainstorm and I will recite some Edith Wharton. That’s
pretty badass in my book.
