The Edith Wharton Society organized two panels at the last ALA conference in Chicago, with one panel on Wharton’s short stories and another on the representation of bodies and mobility in her fiction. While all papers offered rich and diverse perspectives on Wharton’s writings, common themes revealed suggestive consistencies. Women, for instance, were placed at the center of all the papers, as Wharton’s fiction itself so often centers on women; throughout her life, she wrote about them in various genres, offering fascinating female characters to analyze. M. M. Dawley’s presentation reminded us that by the nineteenth century, women had gained some power in society by declaring themselves protectors of innocence in their position as domestic angels. But while early nineteenth-century fiction glorified this vision, by the Gilded Age, writers like Wharton began to satirize the idea of national innocence. Hypocrisy, moral complacency, and social complacency are evident in many of Wharton’s characters. Wharton’s female characters are no exception as they are often paradoxical, multifaceted, and full of surprises, such as in “Roman Fever” (1934). They often prove to be as ruthless as men to obtain what they want. Sometimes they can be even more ruthless than men; this is particularly visible in The Custom of the Country where Undine Spragg is drawn like a typical “femme fatale,” as Maria-Novella Mercuri described her in her presentation.Analyzing female characters inevitably leads to discussing women’s bodies. Donna Campbell’s paper highlighted how women’s bodies reveal social status in Wharton’s short fiction. Their bodies also symbolize what is hidden and unacceptable on a deeper, more political level, such as in “Bewitched” (1925), a dark ghost story that takes place in a Puritan town in New England. Wharton’s use of hidden or dead bodies to criticize the imperial and colonial impulse is also visible in “Mr. Jones” (1930), Campbell posited. But Samantha Seto’s paper made the case that social status visible in women’s bodies is also a feature of some of Wharton’s novels taking place in France, such as The Reef (1912) and The Custom of the Country (1913). In both novels, women’s bodies enhance the differences between French and American societies and foreground the inadequacy of Wharton’s character, Undine Spragg.Ambivalent female characters were not the only connecting thread between the different panels. Ghost stories were also discussed in the two panels, and although they offered a different angle on the subject matter, they both emphasized how the point of the story does not reside in the ghost itself but in what it reveals. Wharton’s ghost stories help us understand how the past is necessary to interpret the present but also how the future reader is necessary for an existent manuscript. Additionally, Wharton’s ghost stories reveal her relationship with the past and with determinism—how the past plays out and how one cannot escape it. The ghost story is the perfect medium through which to observe what is unfinished and attempt untried possibilities, both themes that seem to “haunt” Wharton throughout her career, as Kacie Fodness argued in her paper.Traveling and living abroad was also one of the main themes of the papers, as two presentations discussed The Custom of the Country; one paper, The Reef; and another, “Roman Fever.” Wharton’s extensive travels give Europe a special place in her novels, short stories, essays, and correspondence. The setting of both The Reef and The Custom of the Country in France, Wharton’s adoptive home, allows her to explore the complex subject of American women traveling and living there. Traveling was an expression of choice for the financially privileged and cosmopolitan protagonists of these novels, and it also allowed them to live freely in a way they could not in their homeland. Describing cultural discrepancies is a topos in Wharton’s fiction. However, no matter how difficult the cultural adjustment might be, the protagonists are also cosmopolitan, thus mirroring Wharton’s life. Yet, transnationalism is not always attainable—or desirable—by the protagonists: Undine Spragg returns to New York, while Grace Ansley and Alida Slade in “Roman Fever” do not wish to be more than tourists in Rome.Wharton’s fiction raises issues that are still relevant for the present, as was reflected in the panels. Wharton helps us think about gender in connection to philosophical, political, and theoretical questions. Gender-related issues are visible in most of her writings but especially in “Roman Fever.” This short story questions female competition versus feminist collaboration and the cultural climate that surrounds women’s relationships, discussing factors that promote or discourage bonds between women. The short story also questions the institution of marriage: Does it encourage or discourage female friendship? Are the two women responsible for that competition or are men responsible for it? “Roman Fever” offers ways to examine both what has changed and what has not in society over the years. While women have more opportunities today, have expectations truly shifted? Women now enjoy more sexual and social freedom than previous generations, but does this relatively greater freedom make them less competitive with one another? Have the stakes really changed? Women having autonomy over their own bodies is still very much an issue nowadays, especially in light of recent judicial developments in countries such as the United States. “Roman Fever” provides the perfect pedagogical opportunity to engage with facts as well as fiction within its examination of American marriage, as Dawley made clear in her paper. Campbell suggested that Wharton’s use of women’s hidden or dead bodies to criticize colonial and imperial impulses in her ghost stories might be her way of saying that women were also on the side of oppressed people—that they were not responsible for the men’s actions but were (and still are) casualties, too.Additionally, Wharton raises questions on the theory of fiction, as she interrogates the reception of a novel and the relation between a writer and a reader in the ghost story “Afterward” (1910). She herself notes that ghost stories initiate a unique relation between the reader and the writer as this genre sets up a form of temporality necessary for unfinished works to succeed. By showing that texts have an afterlife, Wharton seems to suggest the idea of “openness,” thirty years before Umberto Eco theorized it in The Open Work (1962).Such philosophical and existential issues were also extensively discussed in the papers. Wharton emphasizes the slim difference between living abroad and being exiled in The Custom of the Country and “Roman Fever.” Traveling made Wharton feel alive, and the connection between that sensation and illness infuses the latter story. Yet, Wharton also remained an American of the old fashion, even in her house in the south of France where she lived for many years. Seto’s presentation explored how Wharton’s fiction never ceases to challenge the notion of belonging. Paradoxically, it seems that her protagonists could be at home in their own skin, wherever they are in the world. Nevertheless, the protagonists keep being reminded of their American status, generating a feeling of simultaneous belonging and unbelonging that is still experienced today by those choosing to live abroad. Fodness’s presentation put forward the idea that Wharton’s ghost stories also harbor a deeper, philosophical intent as they facilitate, as suggested above, the possibilities that the unfinished offers for completion or resolution—preoccupations that emerge throughout Wharton’s writing. Mercuri’s paper also explored philosophical issues by showing Nietzsche’s influence in Wharton’s fiction and poetry of the decade preceding World War I.Finally, although Wharton was not known as a political person, especially in her writings, political questions are still visible. Campbell emphasized in her paper that Wharton often criticizes British colonialism in her ghost stories. One of the questions asked was how paradoxical it is to consider Wharton as a critic of imperial and colonial impulses when she was a political conservative and a fervent defender of French colonialism in Northern Africa (In Morocco, 1920). To this question, Campbell replied that perhaps what interested Wharton in these short stories is not actually the political aspect of colonialism but the relationship with the past and determinism, namely, how the past plays out and how one cannot escape it. All in all, the panels offered opportunities to reevaluate Wharton’s writings and her inventiveness. Acknowledging her different influences, whether literary or artistic, seems to help us understand not only her work but also Wharton herself.Kacie Fodness explored the notion of incompleteness, which she described as “unfinishedness.” In Wharton’s ghost stories, the future is as vital as the past as it allows a text to harbor a potentially richer meaning than it does in the present, thus inscribing the text in a nonpresent temporality. Operating outside time is why ghost stories are such an appealing genre. Wharton herself notes that the ghost stories initiate a unique relation between the reader and the writer as the genre sets up a form of temporality necessary for unfinished works to succeed. Wharton encourages readers to be wary of the word “complete,” and more broadly of the notion of “finishedness” and “unfinishedness” in art. The important thing for Wharton is not that we can make sense of the ghost story but rather that we accept that our traditional language of time falls short.In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Friedrich Nietzsche coins the term “blond beast.” Its famous definition is someone with “unbroken strength of will and lust for power.”1 Maria-Novella Mercuri’s presentation showed how the short story “The Blond Beast” is a more complex treatment of Nietzsche’s theme than the ironic title seems to promise. She also compared the portrayal of the short story’s protagonist Hugh Millner to that of The Custom of the Country’s Elmer Moffatt; both are fully developed specimens of the predatory. Wharton shows that culture domesticates man into social performance and decadence. Both the novel and the short story are influenced by Nietzschean readings in which Wharton was immersed at the time. The other blond beast in the novel, for Mercuri, is a woman, Undine Spragg, a typical “femme fatale”; Undine is unconcerned with other people’s feelings, yet the reader might have some admiration for her energy and determination.“Roman Fever “ (1934) is one of Wharton’s most loved and discussed short stories. M. M. Dawley illuminated the modernist aspect of “Roman Fever,” as the story reflects Wharton’s personal journey from young woman grappling with the “marriage market “ to accomplished writer reflecting on change over time through her depiction of multiple generation of women vacationing in Italy. Wharton frequently has her characters confront traditions that are no longer relevant, particularly in her later work. Their success or failure depends on their ability to recognize the outdated restrictions and their ability to break free from that conditioning. Dawley’s analysis provided an important perspective to the theme of female subjectivity visible in the complex relationship between the two mothers, Grace Ansley and Alida Slade; both characters tend to identify themselves through their husbands and daughters rather than embrace their own identities.Samantha Seto examined the transatlantic identities of heroines in Wharton’s fiction. In The Custom of the Country, Paris is the setting of many interactions between Ralph Marvell and Undine Spragg. In The Reef, the plot takes place in Paris and in Givré, a small rural village where the American Anna Leath lives in a castle. Transnationalism is at the core of both novels, as the differences between French and American cultures are explored throughout. Seto is especially interested in analyzing the differences between French and American societies, and how Undine never fully understands social subtleties. With a keen sense of social realism, Wharton describes French aristocracy and its strong patriotic bond to the French nation. If at times she idealizes French culture and women and considers them superior to American culture and women, she also develops a “cross-nationality” based on this duality while remaining an American at her core.Donna Campbell posited that in Wharton’s short fiction, women’s bodies reflect social status. There seems to be an interesting pattern of women whose bodies are unacceptable or hidden, such as in the later story “The Temperate Zone” (1924). But as Campbell pointed out, women’s bodies can also symbolize what is hidden and unacceptable on a deeper, and more political level, such as in “Bewitched” (1925). As suggested above, in Wharton’s ghost stories, the point of the story tends to be in what the ghost reveals. In this case, it is the sin of the colonial past, as the town where the characters live was built on land stolen from slaughtered natives. Campbell argued that Wharton’s use of hidden or dead bodies to criticize the imperial and colonial impulse is also visible in “Mr. Jones” (1930). What Wharton is ironically questioning is, in fact, the legacy of British colonialism, Campbell concluded.