The New Compass: A Critical Review
Sexual Purity and Relentless Indecision in Wharton’s The Reef
Sarah Emsley
Pat Menon writes in her essay
“‘Beings of a Different Language’: Pragmatist Meets Idealist in Edith Wharton’s
The Reef” (The New Compass 2 [2003]) that she suspects herself of a “wish to
shield [herself] from the endless anxieties experienced by the characters, or,
at a further remove, from Wharton’s own despair.” While the anxieties of Anna
Leath and the protestations of her suitor George Darrow do indeed seem endless,
I question the conclusion that the ending of The Reef represents Wharton’s own despair. Menon makes several
excellent points about the novel’s structure (especially the parallel scenes of
introduction, of Darrow as a man of action and Anna as a contemplative
character), Anna’s fear of sexual experience, and the question of whether
desire can mediate between pragmatism and idealism; however, her analysis of
the ending of the novel suggests, wrongly, I think, that Wharton was not in
control of her material. She says that “the very depth of disturbance which
Anna feels, and which is conveyed so powerfully to the reader, suggests
Wharton’s own involvement, and gives one cause to wonder whether, perhaps, her
own personal uncertainties linger to colour the work.”
This
conclusion returns to the biographical model of criticism invoked at the
beginning of the essay, where Menon states that “By the time of the publication
of The Reef in 1912,” Wharton’s
affair with the “compulsive Casanova” Morton Fullerton “had been transmuted
into friendship, and Wharton chose to build her novel on the much more limited
infidelity of George Darrow, suggesting that she had been partially successful
in teasing out issues of universal concern from her own experience.” It’s quite
possible that Wharton’s composition of The
Reef (and indeed, of many of her subsequent novels) was influenced by the
passionate sexual affair she had with Fullerton, but to assert that the novel
was built on that experience is to overemphasize the directness of the relation
between fiction and life.
The
co-incidence of the end of the affair with
Menon
is right to claim that the novel does much more than show both Anna and Sophy
learning that “women do not live in a fairytale.” Her use of the work of William
James to illuminate the contrasts between pragmatism and idealism in the novel
is a very helpful investigation of the complex philosophical themes Wharton
explores through her fiction. But in addition to criticizing the double
standard of sexual innocence as it is applied to women, and in addition to
contrasting two ideological positions, Wharton both experiments with the idea
that men ought to be held to a higher standard of sexual purity, and suggests,
finally, that reconciling idealism and pragmatism may be impossible.
In
one of the many scenes in which Anna agonizes over whether or not she can ever
be with Darrow now that she knows the secret of the sexual affair with Sophy
Viner, which he dismisses as “a moment’s folly … a flash of madness” (Edith Wharton,
The Reef [New York: Scribner, 1996]
268), she is torn between thinking objectively about the situation and feeling
desire for the fallen man she had idealized. She wishes the secret had never
come out: “suddenly she was filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her
disastrous attempt to see” (295). Her scruples get the better of her for a
while again, and then the next day she recovers from her doubts, remembering
that “Darrow had said: ‘You were made to feel everything’; and to feel was surely
better than to judge” (299). The excruciating changes of Anna’s mind are due to
the conflict between feeling and judging.
She
“resolved […] to marry Darrow and never let the consciousness of the past
intrude itself between them; but she was beginning to think that the only way
of attaining to this state of detachment from the irreparable was once for all
to turn back with him to its contemplation” (300). Anna is driven relentlessly
onward in her desire to ask “Had such things happened to him before?” After
another sleepless night, she decides that “she must snatch herself out of the
torpor of the will into which she had been gradually sinking, and tell Darrow
that she could not be his wife” (305). While “passionate reactions of instinct
fought against these efforts of her will,” “In that moment of self-searching
she saw that Sophy Viner had chosen the better part, and that certain
renunciations might enrich where possession would have left a desert” (306). It
is when she turns to the example of Sophy that she thinks she can see her way
more clearly.
She
confronts Darrow with the question, “‘Do such things happen to men often?’”
(310). He has urged her to look at life as it really is, and that’s exactly
what she’s trying to do. Her curiosity, now that she has started to look, makes
her ask something she doesn’t really want to discuss. And his reluctance to
tell her about life as it really is means that all he can say is “‘I don’t know
what happens to other men. Such a thing never happened to me…’” (310). What he
means here is, such an adventure never happened to me before. What she is
asking is, has he had sexual affairs before. Menon is certainly right that they
don’t speak the same language. Darrow has had affairs before—his feeling of
“ownership” of Lady Ulrica Crispin (31) is evidence that his affair with Sophy
is not the first. This question of male sexual honour is something that Anna
has never thought of before. Now that she is looking at life, she actually
wants to know: do unmarried men, even seemingly honorable unmarried men such as
Darrow, have sex? It’s a simple question, really, and he is the one who has
said she should learn to look at such things without hypocrisy.
Anna
learns to see reality beyond the fairytale ideal of male and female sexual purity,
but she continues to hold both men and women to a high standard of sexual and
ethical conduct. In showing Anna’s insistence on knowing whether, and why, men
conduct sexual affairs, Wharton inverts the double standard and proposes an
unconventional, yet still feminist, argument. Instead of suggesting that women
should be judged as men are, permitted all the freedoms that men enjoy, Wharton
raises the question of whether men should instead be held to the same standard
of sexual purity that they expect of women. Darrow would be appalled to find
that Anna had had a casual affair, yet he hopes, even expects, that she will
overlook the one he had with the woman Anna later hired as a governess for her
daughter. I don’t mean to suggest that Wharton necessarily agrees that male
sexual honour should be held to Anna’s ideal standards, but I think she does
enjoy inverting convention by focusing primarily on the problem of Darrow’s
fallen state.
Anna
struggles with the question of whether to forgive Darrow for having the affair
when he was on his way to see her and for having kept his secret until the
observations of Owen (her stepson and also Sophy’s fiancé) brought it to light.
She cannot quite bring herself to put his past behind her, and she is keenly
aware that her future relations with him will also have an effect on Owen and
her daughter Effie. As Menon suggests, “it is possible that Wharton wants us to
believe as Darrow does, that Anna is, without realizing it, seeking in her duty
to her family a means to evade the final sexual commitment to him.” Over and
over again, Anna thinks she has made her choice, first to give him up forever,
then that they must marry because she cannot live without him. It may seem that
Wharton’s method of sending her characters back and forth for endless
confrontations throughout the second half of the novel is excessive. The
technique, however, imitates the struggle of the mind between warring impulses
and judgements. There is something relentless about this series of interviews,
and, I would argue, the relentlessness is the point.
In
her essay, Menon objects that “certainty is elusive,” but instead of examining
why that might be within the context of the novel, she concludes that the
uncertainties in the narrative may be due to Wharton’s “personal
uncertainties.” She writes that “it is the chaos rather than the truth that
seems, to me, to triumph,” and that Wharton is not going to provide the reader
with the satisfaction of closure: “Pragmatism and Idealism are never going to
be reconciled in the world of The Reef,
and no Jamesian lecture is going to save me from the distress of those final
chapters.” Darrow’s pragmatism and Anna’s idealism are irreconcileable, and
there is no ultimate scene of reunion or forgiveness. Sexual desire has thus
far proven inadequate to bridge the divide between their two worlds, no matter
how much either character has hoped that it will help.
In
the last pages of the novel, Anna determines to visit Sophy: “She would seek
the girl out and tell her that she had given Darrow up” (328). She traces Sophy
to the apartment of Sophy’s sister Laura at the Hotel Chicago—but there she
encounters a strange scene in “a dim untidy scented room” with a “Larger,
blonder” version of Sophy (331-32). Laura tells her that “‘Sophy went away last
night’” (333), and it turns out that she has gone to India, with her previous
employer, Mrs. Murrett. Anna thanks her and turns to leave. This scene is the
end of the novel, and we have no further access to Anna’s thoughts.
Does
this scene suggest that Anna can dismiss the idea that Sophy is more honorable,
because she can now see Sophy as a fallen woman, potentially like her vulgar
sister? Or does the fact that Sophy is really gone confirm that she has held to
a higher path? The last thing we know is that Anna has determined to give
Darrow up once and for all. Will she? Even if she doesn’t, she hasn’t forgiven
him, and they are locked in an endless struggle between feeling and
understanding because the sexual jealousy persists. Anna can’t quite
understand, doesn’t want to understand, doesn’t want to be complicit, but
doesn’t want to be alone. Darrow maintains that his actions are understandable,
and that it’s just that she doesn’t understand how life really is. The
situation is hopeless. No one can forget, or forgive. Sophy leaves, determined
to remember. Owen leaves, haunted by what he suspects. Anna stays, haunted by
what she knows, and Darrow stays, plagued by the fact that the secret ever came
out to destroy his second chance with Anna, and yet persisting in the belief
that he was not wrong.
Menon
argues that “The ugliness of the conclusion […] suggests a final loss of
control. Meanwhile, the inconclusiveness of Anna’s responses, which,
convincingly in the circumstances, are self-protectively focused on the
physical and social requirements of escaping from the suite, make it impossible
to forecast what Anna’s subsequent reaction will be, although there is nothing
to suggest it will not be a repetition of past oscillations.” In fact, it seems
likely that it will be a repetition of the struggle between pragmatism and
idealism. If we are to fault Wharton for anything in the ending of The Reef, perhaps we should criticize
her for maintaining the strict separation of her hero and heroine as
ideological types. The conclusion of The
Reef is inconclusive not because of Wharton’s personal despair, or because
she doesn’t know how to resolve the conflict, but because, as an artist, she is
interested in the problems of ethical indeterminacy, and she shows how some
dilemmas may be simply unresolveable. Sooner or later Anna will have to make a
choice, but even if they do marry, she may decide later that it was the wrong
choice, and the vacillation may continue. Choice in the short term may be possible,
but we cannot know whether a given choice will endure, and Wharton’s novel
presents us with the uncomfortable possibility that choices are never as fixed
as we think they are. Life continues beyond the last chapter, tense, chaotic,
and, in this case, indefinable indefinitely.
Emsley, Sarah. “Sexual Purity and
Relentless Indecision in Wharton’s The
Reef: A Reply to Pat Menon.” The New Compass: A Critical Review 3 (June
2004) <http://www.thenewcompass.ca/jun2004/emsley.html>