Edith Wharton: como te amo. Segunda historia que leo de la escritora y cada día me gusta más.

Podrían pensar que no pasa "nada" o muy poco durante la historia pero es realmente fascinante ver como Wharton ejemplifica complicadas decisiones de carácter moral y ético y sus personajes tienen profundidad.

Aunque no me gustó tanto como "La solterona" lo disfruté mucho.

Sin duda, el enfrentamiento entre la señora Bernie y Kate Peyton... ¡ufffffffff!

3.5 stars

Edith Wharton read #3

This novella, published in 1909, introduces us to Kate Orme, who arrives at the realization that her perfect fiancee doesn't have perfect morals. She marries him in an effort to ensure that his family line won't be spoiled. The couple's son soon takes all of Kate's focus, but when he becomes an eligible bachelor, she fears the temptations that are in front of him. Can Kate save her son? Or will he become like his father?

Love her or not, Wharton's Kate captured my attention from the very beginning and certainly offers a glimmer into the nature versus nurture debate of the 1900's.


Goodreads review published 30/09/20

Para ser Edith Wharton me ha resultado flojo e insulso.

Me encantan las historias sobre dilemas éticos.

Esta de Wharton se divide en dos partes:

. En la primera, la protagonista rumia de joven qué actitud debe adoptar cuando se entera de que alguien a quien aprecia no ha obrado correctamente.

. En la segunda (la verdaderamente interesante), la protagonista se enfrenta años después a la posibilidad de que otra persona muy cercana caiga en la tentación de hacer algo que ella considera reprobable.

¿Qué ha cambiado en ella con el tiempo? ¿Qué puede hacer esta segunda vez? ¿Qué sentido da todo ello a su vida?

Hay diálogos finos como hilos de ilusionista, descripciones casi inaprensibles de sentimientos complejos y párrafos enteros que hacen desconfiar de la capacidad del traductor. Pero también miguitas de pan que Wharton deja compasivamente a cada poco para que el lector no se pierda en lo abstracto del planteamiento.

Recomiendo leerlo de una sentada —cosa que yo no he hecho—, para tener fresca la primera parte cuando se lea la segunda; pero con calma, para ir reflexionando acerca de los paralelismos entre ambas partes.

El final podría haber sido algo más sutil pero tiene potencial para emocionar.

Kate Orme is about to be married to a charming man, but discovers that he is morally flawed - he is indirectly responsible for the suicide of his deceased half-brother's common-law wife, after which he pockets the not inconsiderable inheritance. Kate decides to go through with the marriage, telling herself that this knowledge will help her to keep their children out of seduction (in the event, they have only one child, a son). She apparently believes in nurture over nature. Several readers have written that they can't accept Kate's decision: why marry a good-for-nothing? The truth is that Kate is cheating herself: by marrying, perhaps because she could not refuse the comfort of an inheritance, she is just as guilty as her husband. She does everything in her power to instill in their son the highest moral principles. Yet, when 25 years later the son is faced with his own moral dilemma, she is over-vigilant and uses her son to work out her own guilt. She waits nervously for his final decision...

Also see Edith Wharton on my website: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...

The novella presents two interesting moral dilemmas but is too verbose for my taste.

This is a very slight novella by Edith Wharton - I enjoyed her beautiful prose style, but felt that, after a strong and disturbing opening, the rest of the story falls off somewhat and isn't up there with her at her greatest.

4,5 csillag

1903-ban jelent meg az a kisregény, tehát 3 évvel a The Touchstone, és csak 1 évvel az első nagyregénye után. És szerintem ugrásszerű a javulás, pedig a Touchstone is kifejezetten tetszett.

Itt már nem egy szende morálszobor a női karakter, és főszereplő ráadásul. Ez már plusz pont. De nagyon érdekes, ahogy Kate fiatalon, jegyesként kerül abba a helyzetbe, hogy egy szerette morálisan elítélhető dolgot tesz, majd a történet második felében huszonévekkel később már anyaként kerül ugyanebbe a helyzetbe.

n  Az első esetben a vőlegénye hamistanúzott gyakorlatilag, és miatta lett öngyilkos a bátyja valójában felesége egy kisgyerekkel együtt. Lehet, hogy maga a nő nem volt jó ember, ez nem derül ki. Hiszen a lényeg az, hogy akármilyen ember is volt, morálisan a férfi rosszat tett, ő mégsem érzi úgy. Megimserhetjük a vőlegény anyjának is a nézőpontját. Úgy is mondhatnám, hogy nézd meg az anyját, ne menj hozzá a fiához.n

n  De Kate hozzámegy. És a második esetben pedig bebizonyosodik, hogy a nevelés nagyon sokat számít. Mert Kate-et megnézve én bizony hozzámennék a fiához. Mondjuk az a kis számító kiscsaj, aki tényleg hozzá akar menni, ő nem tudom, miért akar, hiszen ő pont a társadalom fertőjébe illik inkább... De a fiú végül nem teszi meg a morálisan elítélhető dolgot. Egyébként nem számítottam boldog végre, úgyhogy rendesen meglepődtem.n

Ami nagyon tetszett, hogy közben Kate gondolatait is megismerhetjük a második esetben, és őt is megkísértik a másnak ártó gondolatok. De tettlegességig sosem jut el.

Őszintén, minél tovább gondolkodom rajta, annál inkább meglepdöm, hogy ebbe a 2 óra 40 percbe mekkora mélység és komplexitás fért bele. Újfent köszönet illeti a LibriVoxot és Elizabeth Klettet. Alig várom Edith Wharton többi művét.

What a treat to start a new Edith Wharton book that I have never read before. However, that also means there’s one less Edith Wharton book existing that is new to me. I wish great authors were immortal and keep churning them out forever.

And if my edition’s Foreword by William Fiennes says that the 94-page Sanctuary’s prose does not rise to the level of House of Mirth or The Age of Innocence, my response is “So what?” That’s a pretty high bar and there’s hardly shame in not meeting that, even for Mrs. Wharton.

Sanctuary, like so much of Wharton’s work, deals with characters facing decisions about reconciling their private morality with the expediencies of their public lives, lives ruled by society’s demands. She examines the degree to which people are honest with themselves in making moral decisions, the role of their rationalizations and levels of self-awareness. Sanctuary is a short example of this, with some set-up in the first section that takes place two decades prior to the main action. In the second part, Kate Peyton follows her young architect son’s decision about an ethical issue while participating in a competition that can make or break his career and also determine whether he wins Clemence Verny, a calculating beauty Kate believes may be a pernicious influence.

William Fiennes’ 2006 Foreword makes the odd claim that Kate, in Part One, turns her late husband’s dishonesty “into her tragedy, her spiritual crisis” in debating whether to marry him and that their son, Dick, in Part Two “exists only as an annex to his mother’s self-obsession.” These reservations are stated, even when Fiennes leads the essay off with Wharton’s quote from her autobiography A Backward Glance that “’the first duty’ for any member of the New York society of her youth was ‘to maintain a strict standard of uprightness in affairs’: what counted above all was ‘scrupulous probity’ in both business and private life.”

Mr. Fiennes seems to be criticizing Kate’s “obsession.” But why wouldn’t a mother’s concern about her child’s moral development and commitment to a life of integrity be of special interest and a crisis for her, especially in light of her life-long wish to help him develop a moral compass? To see what type of value system her son, the person she loves most in the world, had developed under her tutelage, when this guidance she’d tried to give him had been her sole goal and aim in life. To know whether she has failed him in her life’s work of preparing him for a moral life, to know right from wrong and act accordingly, even when it’s not immediately advantageous? This worry seems to be to be a valid and serious expression of her maternal love and hardly the “self-obsession” of a woman who “hides her self-interest under the scarves of her moral scruples.” Fiennes seems to have a higher opinion of Clemence Verny for her “clear-sighted, pragmatic” views and her bold declarations about her “affection for the outward trappings of success.”

Kate’s concerns are valid issues for a serious novel and, as a short and stripped-down example of Wharton’s themes, I found the story and characters interesting and compelling, even if it does not top my list of Wharton’s best novels. Three and a half stars, rounded up.

My 10th Edith Wharton book

Nature versus nurture underlies the plot of this novella. Kate is about to be married to a wealthy, charming man. However, his morality is weak and he indirectly causes the death of a woman and her son. Kate finds this out and instead of the rose tinted glass future she see’s the reality of her marriage to this man. Instead of running a mile she goes through with the wedding. In our time unthinkable but this is the 1900s.

In part 2 of the book it is 25 years later and her son faces his own moral dilemma. Kate would have to be the classic interfering mother except she does not. She believes she has brought up Dick correctly and awaits his final decision on tenterhooks. Dick has to make a decision on using someone else’s work to win a competition and also his fiancée who will only marry him if he is successful. I will not give way the outcome but this is a good solid novella with glimpses of the authors brilliance in future novels shining through.

Not a typical Wharton, but an interesting morality novella about doing the right thing, and how the “sins” of the father manifest in the son.