[issybird]

I read this years ago and I thought it even better than I remembered. A masterpiece, in fact. I was enthralled; there were so many depths to the story and for me, the portrayal of a tiny portion of New York society at a very particular time was fully realized.

I agree that the love story wasn't the tragedy, but lives lived only partially, on the sidelines and in the shadows, without the people's being fully engaged. Also that early decisions reverberate forever, which is the human condition. That Newland was conscious of his limitations and his choices and that he actively chose not to engage, was also tragic for me. Although, as with HIMS and treadlightly, I don't feel sorry for him on that account. Thoreau's famous statement, "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation," applies here - and at a time when most scratched out a barely subsistence living (and indeed made the leisure and opulence portrayed here possible) it's impossible to waste pity on someone who had choices.

I loved how Wharton evoked the sense of society living in the shadow of Vesuvius. Willful blindness even as they deplored "change" and "trends." The Civil War had ended a scant decade ago and you'd never know it, nor, more locally, that Boss Tweed had just been brought down. But New York liked to pretend that its money was old and clean, even though the reverberations of Beaufort's failure showed that it wasn't the case.

And the women! They ruled. Catherine Mingott, Mrs. Archer, Mre. Welland, and even May - Newland was helpless against them, as he thought he was so far-seeing in wishing as much social latitude for women as the men had.

It is so beautifully written. One of my favorite bits was the the broken Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow at the decaying farm in Portsmouth, just as May was triumphing in the archery competion in Newport. Not subtle (Wharton wasn't always subtle), but in that juxtaposition, we knew who would win.