Edith Wharton me sigue pareciendo excepcional escritora.

Dated, predictable, and boring. The intended parallel between the two Dicks and their moral crises was weak.

Meh.

I think it shows that this is one of her earliest books. Not going to be a favorite.

«Resulta poco frecuente que la juventud se permita una felicidad perfecta. Da la impresión de que deben realizarse demasiadas operaciones de selección y rechazo como para poder ponerse al alcance del subyugante despertar de la vida.»

Kate Orme vive enamorada y satisfecha con el sentimiento de pertenencia mútuo que tiene con su prometido, Denis Peyton. Sin embargo, su visión sobre él cambia rotundamente cuando descubre que, para beneficiarse así mismo con una herencia, tiene una actitud moralmente reprochable. Esto la hace replantearse no solo la boda sino sus sentimientos hacia él.

Años más tarde, ya siendo madre, el dilema moral lo vive con su hijo, a quien, a pesar de darle libertad y respetar sus decisiones, lo crió muy de cerca para intentar forjarlo con altos valores. Ahora Kate espera inquieta cómo su vástago resolverá su encrucijada personal mientras busca la forma de apoyarlo.

«Santuario», publicada por primera vez en 1903, es una de las primeras obras de la talentosa Edith Wharton (primera mujer en obtener el premio Pulitzer). La escritora norteamericana tiene la maestría de presentar personajes femeninos fuertes que contrastan con los hombres pusilánimes, en una sociedad costumbrista donde el ámbito de influencia de la mujer se limitaba la esfera de lo privado.

Wharton no solo presenta la maternidad como estrategia íntima para la expiación de una culpa o una vía para eximirla, sino el cuestionamiento de valores y la propia moral en el complejo camino de la búsqueda de la felicidad.

Me ha gustado este libro por los debates morales a los que nos somete la autora, por lo menos a mí me ha llevado a pensar cómo actuaría yo ante las dos tentaciones principales a las que se ven sometidos los personajes de esta obra. Quizás el libro peca un poco de moralista, y la crítica a la sociedad de la época hubiera ganado con un tono más mordaz, pero es ese análisis de los defectos de los adinerados, todo cubierto por un velo de rectitud del que en realidad adolecen, lo que más me ha gustado de la lectura.

"Before he was out of the fever she had the noose around him - he came to and found himself married."

So dramatic.

I listened to the audio book version of Sanctuary narrated by Lee Ann Howlett. Sanctuary is one of Wharton's earlier novellas, having been published in 1903. As such it does not have the polished quality of her more famous works, such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. However, Sanctuary includes Wharton's trademark use of dramatic irony.

The story centers on Kate, who marries a man after she discovers that he is morally flawed by failing to acknowledge his now deceased brother's wife and son, thus cutting them out of their legitimate inheritance. After her husband dies and she raises her son into adulthood, the son starts displaying many of his father's flaws. Personally, I felt Kate's actions to be that of a "helicopter parent" and very uncomfortable.

Lee Ann Howlett's performance was solid, having different tones and inflections for the varying characters. Her reading pace was also good and set the proper atmosphere for the story.

In short, Sanctuary is worth reading or listening to, especially as a study into Wharton's development of life and moral struggles in her characters, which would eventually earn her a Pulitzer Prize.

46. Sanctuary by Edith Wharton
published: 1902
format: 52-page kindle ebook (typically ~ 100 pages)
acquired: September 7
read: Sep 27
time reading: 2:46, 3.2 mpp
rating: 4
locations: California?, New York City
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Spent most of her writing life in France.

Wharton‘s 3rd work of fiction, a novella from 1902, consists of two connected parts around Kate Peyton, née Orme. First a naïve Kate discovers her fiancé has conned an inheritance, and she still marries him. In part 2 her son has a moral quandary. Kate is passionately well-meaning, morality driven and likable, but strained by circumstance, and ultimately humanly flawed. She has to discover for herself her charmed “life was honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage.” And, she struggles herself to understand her relationship with her son, whose life she is maybe over-involved in. ("As she sat there in the radius of lamplight which, for so many evenings, had held Dick and herself in a charmed circle of tenderness, she saw that her love for her boy had come to be merely a kind of extended egotism.") She never does seem to realize how awkward is what she is doing. I think it's fair to say a lot is going here that she doesn't really understand.

I enjoyed this and reading with a Wharton group on Litsy. It gave me a lot to think about. Our next book with be The House of Mirth

Kate is happily engaged to Denis. Denis is faced with a moral dilemma and fails to act correctly (in the eyes of Kate). They marry have one child and Kate is determined her son will be of stronger ilk than his father. History repeats and the son faces his own crisis. Does nature, nurture or neither win out?
While there is the question of values being explored the book reads like a 18th century story and did not really grab my interest.

3.5

In my Edith Wharton era now

This one doesn't age well--the mother/son relationship is creepy--but the writing is beautiful as always.