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I've only read three of the stories in this collection, so I'll just give my reviews on those:
Madame de Treymes -- a novella about Americans in Paris; it deals with divorce and conventions in France. It is short enough to work together in one piece, unlike the earlier novels. Apart from The Age of Innocence, I think Wharton is best in shorter forms.
Ethan Frome - I first read this one forty years ago in High School, but didn't remember much of it. It is very different from anything else I have read so far by Wharton: it deals with very poor people, rather than the rich and famous, concentrates on three isolated characters rather than "society", and has a much simpler and direct kind of emotional conflict. I assume that the reason my high school chose this rather untypical novella as the one Wharton to read is because the conflict is more "existential" than "social", and requires less imagination to understand or sympathize with the characters.
Summer - This is another novella in the world and style of Ethan Frome. I found these two novellas to be much less realistic than her other works -- perhaps paradoxically, because the characters are obviously meant to be "real" as opposed to the artificial characters in the "society" books. To me, though, they seemed less based on real people and events, and more like people out of novels. I think they are basically just a negative reflection of the other characters -- the kind of people that a Lily Bart in a fit of self-loathing would imagine as being "authentic". Where the characters in the other works smother their emotions in a web of over-analysis and calculation, these characters are largely puppets of unanalyzed emotions; where the others suffer from their own choices among imaginary options, these seem to have no real choices; where the others are defined by an artificial "society", these seem to exist almost in isolation from any society at all; and so forth. The two subjects of Wharton's writing seem to me to be at opposite ends of the social spectrum, with no links or intermediate strata -- either "high society" or incredibly exaggerated poverty and isolation.
Madame de Treymes -- a novella about Americans in Paris; it deals with divorce and conventions in France. It is short enough to work together in one piece, unlike the earlier novels. Apart from The Age of Innocence, I think Wharton is best in shorter forms.
Ethan Frome - I first read this one forty years ago in High School, but didn't remember much of it. It is very different from anything else I have read so far by Wharton: it deals with very poor people, rather than the rich and famous, concentrates on three isolated characters rather than "society", and has a much simpler and direct kind of emotional conflict. I assume that the reason my high school chose this rather untypical novella as the one Wharton to read is because the conflict is more "existential" than "social", and requires less imagination to understand or sympathize with the characters.
Summer - This is another novella in the world and style of Ethan Frome. I found these two novellas to be much less realistic than her other works -- perhaps paradoxically, because the characters are obviously meant to be "real" as opposed to the artificial characters in the "society" books. To me, though, they seemed less based on real people and events, and more like people out of novels. I think they are basically just a negative reflection of the other characters -- the kind of people that a Lily Bart in a fit of self-loathing would imagine as being "authentic". Where the characters in the other works smother their emotions in a web of over-analysis and calculation, these characters are largely puppets of unanalyzed emotions; where the others suffer from their own choices among imaginary options, these seem to have no real choices; where the others are defined by an artificial "society", these seem to exist almost in isolation from any society at all; and so forth. The two subjects of Wharton's writing seem to me to be at opposite ends of the social spectrum, with no links or intermediate strata -- either "high society" or incredibly exaggerated poverty and isolation.
