Week 1, Fiction -- Plot. Edith Wharton.

NOTES ON FICTION: PLOT.  EDITH WHARTON

Chapter 1: Plot. Read this chapter's introductory material (50-58). Edith Wharton. "Roman Fever" (85-95).

Edith Wharton – try rearranging her short story after the Freytag model for the structure of fiction. There's an unfolding plot which yields an insight that revives a past conflict and entails the revelation of two perspectives on a secret.  The two women remain civil at the end, but there's no final resolution.  Not much happens in the usual sense – they are sitting on a terrace, with Grace knitting contentedly and Mrs. Slade brooding.  Silence opens up a space for contemplation about themselves and their relationship.  Slade has supposedly led the more exciting life since she was the wife of a celebrity corporate lawyer, but clearly she's dissatisfied.

Grace Ansley's daughter Barbara, or Babs, is the more "brilliant."  The implication is that this is actually her daughter by Delphin Slade, as we find out at the end.

Alida Slade's daughter Jenny is "perfect" but doesn't offer an exciting futurity to her mother, either.  Not a project, I suppose.

In the end, Mrs. Slade's dissatisfaction has ended up reordering her sense of the past and its meaning.

A competition to make life mean something; both are now superfluous women, but one clearly has the edge over the other: Ansley.  That's the surprise revealed towards the end.

For further discussion, refer to the audio mp3 file of my comments in class, available from www.ajdrake.com/wiki.