"Not Precisely War Stories": Edith Wharton's Short Fiction from the Great War

Abstract

"Not Precisely War Stories":Edith Wharton's Short Fiction from the Great War Julie Olin-Ammentorp Julie Olin-Ammentorp Le Moyne College Notes 1. Edith Wharton, The Letters of Edith Wharton, ed. R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis (New York: Scribner's, 1988), p. 357. 2. In Edith Wharton: A Biography (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), R. W. B. Lewis counts only "Coming Home" as a war story. I follow Barbara White's count of three in Edith Wharton: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne, 1991). Wharton's own phrase—"not precisely war stories"—suggests broadening the genre. 3. White, p. 88. 4. Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934; repr. New York: Scribner's, 1961), pp. 355, 357. 5. Wharton, Letters, p. 333. 6. See Lewis, Edith Wharton and Shari Benstock, No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton (New York: Scribner's, 1994). 7. Letters, p. 409. 8. Edith Wharton, Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort (New York: Scribner's, 1917), p. 83. 9. Wharton, Fighting France, pp. 88-89. Compare also the passage beginning "The wooded cliff swarmed with 'them'" (p. 133). 10. Wharton, Fighting France, p. 200. 11. Wharton, Fighting France, pp. 146, 149. 12. Wharton, Fighting France, pp. 139-40; final ellipsis Wharton's. 13. Wharton, Fighting France, p. 176. 14. Wharton, Fighting France, pp. 208-9. 15. Wharton, Fighting France, p. 193. 16. Wharton, Fighting France, p. 33. 17. Wharton, Fighting France, p. 50. 18. Wharton, Fighting France, p. 50. 19. Wharton, Letters, p. 356. In No Man's Land, Vol. 2: Sexchanges (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar quote Mrs. Humphry Ward's similar enthusiasm upon visiting the front: "For a woman—a marvellous experience!" (pp. 295-96). 20. Wharton, Letters, p. 356. 21. Wharton, Letters, p. 356. 22. Wharton, Letters, p. 350. 23. Wharton, Letters, p. 398. 24. The story has rarely been discussed, and when it is is often faulted for its structure. Barbara White writes that "It has an unnecessary proliferation of narrators, an overcomplicated plot, and a confused ending" (p. 86). But Alan Price notes that when the story was published in the collection Xingu it was "singled out as 'the most notable in the book,'" and that Wharton's editors "were quick to praise the narrative structure: "We need not elaborate on our liking the way in which the story is told—the interposition of the American youth [Greer] as narrator gives it just the right touch for a story of these accumulating horrors." Alan Price, "Edith Wharton's War Story," TSWL 8 (1989), 95, 98. 25. Edith Wharton, The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, Vol. 2, ed. R. W. B. Lewis (New York: Scribner's, 1968), p. 230. All further references to Wharton's short stories will be to this volume and will be cited parenthetically in the text. 26. See Lewis, Edith Wharton, p. 367. 27. Wharton, Letters, p. 339. 28. "Scharlach" is German for "scarlet"; it also resonates, of course, with the English "scar." 29. Both Lewis (Edith Wharton, p. 394) and Barbara White (p. 86) assume Yvonne Malo's sexual relationship with Scharlach, yet it is not as decidedly implied as one might expect; the only real hint is Yvonne's reluctance to talk to Jean alone. By way of contrast, there is very little doubt that Jean is responsible for Scharlach's death. 30. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), p. 115. 31. Quoted in Price, p. 95. 32. In that she finds her "vocation" in the war, Audrey Rushworth is reminiscent of Radclyffe Hall's Miss Ogilvie in "Miss Ogilvie Finds Herself" (1926; in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar [New York: W.W. Norton, 1985, pp. 1443-57). Although Miss Ogilvie ultimately dies an untimely death, there is no doubt that her war-time activities fulfilled her, giving her at last a sense of full humanity. In contrast, Audrey Rushworth—though finally out of her forgotten niche in the family estate, and living with a sense of purpose—seems callous and self-important rather than a...