Edith Wharton's "The Reef": The Genteel Woman's Quest for Knowledge

Abstract

Although admired by Henry James and Percy Lubbock as Edith Wharton's best novel, The Reef has been, for all practical purposes, consigned to the critic's museum of unread books.1 Blake Nevius supports his contention that its permanent value . .. remains an uncertain quantity by casting doubt on its artistry and deploring the upper-class bias of its vision.2 Even Louis Auchincloss begins his introduction to the recent Scribner edition with a caveat that not every reader will respond sympathetically to its climate. 3 Less tentative than Nevius and Auchincloss, Geoffrey Walton pronounces it a dated fiction.4 It may be argued that James's admiration constitutes a fine case of narcissism, for The Reef bears conspicuous testimony to his influence: story gives way to psychological analysis, and well-sustained point of view locates the action largely within the sensibility of the main character. Yet, in praising both Mrs. Wharton's art and strong subject, James undoubtedly acknowledged more than mere discipleship; he paid tribute to his younger friend's sensitive and tough-minded exploration of the female consciousness in the crisis of a development half-resisted and halfwelcomed. Connoisseur as he was of renunciations, he must have seen too that the heroine's ultimate renunciation grew from a vision of the individual life as a vital service in behalf of the moral structure of society. Anna Leath, the heroine of The Reef, Edith Wharton portrays, with unusual honesty and sympathy, a genteel woman whose innate curiosity and thirst for experience are threatened by the requirements of a lady-like existence. Before her marriage to Fraser Leath, Anna Summers figures as the high-minded and pure feminine ideal of an affluent and intellectually disinfected society comparable to that of the Wellands in The Age of Innocence. Insulated from the rough chances and contrasts of the world, she is in danger of succumbing to its grace and tepidness, its civility and sterility: In the well-regulated well-fed Summers world the unusual was regarded as either immoral or ill-bred, and people with emotions