Emotional shipwreck in aristocratic waters

For much of her career, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) brought the hypocrisy of the New York upper class and its puritanical mentality to literature, although she eventually settled in the south of France after divorcing a Boston banker. She wrote novels such as The Manners of the Country (1913), a reflection of the appearance-conscious aristocracy, based on the ambition of a provincial girl eager to change her status, and The Age of Innocence (1920, Pulitzer Prize winner), which narrated the prejudices in romantic relationships and has just been published in Catalan by La Temerària Editorial.

Along with these works with a sociological background, Wharton focused on plots where the focus was on female psychology and agency, as in The Renunciation (1925), the story of an exile on the French Riviera who returns to New York to face the consequences of what she perpetrated: the moment she abandoned her young daughter and her husband for another man. “The rich also cry” would be the vulgar subtitle of the bedroom and ballroom intrigues of this novel, which would be similar to The Reef , in which a diplomat sees again the woman who left him for his lover years before and who, after being widowed, lives alone in a French castle.

E.M. Forster, in a 1920 article reviewing Wharton's French Ways and Their Meanings (Plaza & Janés, 2001), said that Wharton "was relentless as a novelist writing about individuals." To begin with, she was relentless with herself, because analyzing the environment in which she was born, she became lost in the obsession of exile and Gallic fervor. That distance, however, would not prevent her from becoming, along with Willa Cather, the narrator who best captured American society, at least in the eyes of Harold Bloom, who said that no other compatriot had surpassed her.

⁄ Wharton anticipated feminism, showing the clash of female autonomy and patriarchal expectation

It sounds hyperbolic, but let's analyze this 1912 novel, which achieves what it sets out to do: immerse the reader in a sea of pent-up emotions, social misunderstandings, and moral tensions that gradually deteriorate the relationships between its characters. Therein lies its interest, but also its timeliness, as Wharton's treatment of the conventions of the American upper class, which was its central theme, is both interesting and alien.

The novel revolves around George Darrow, a diplomat who, on his way to meet Anna Leath—a widow with whom he hopes to rekindle an old relationship—finds himself involved in a brief affair with Sophy Viner, a young governess. The title, The Reef , operates as a metaphor: a formation hidden beneath the surface of the seemingly calm waters of bourgeois life, capable of deteriorating even the most carefully established relationships.

“They had met again in London, about three months earlier, at a dinner at the American embassy, and when she saw him, her smile was like a red rose pinned to her mourning dress,” we read at the beginning, with a tone that betrays the romantic melodrama we are about to explore. Aside from its often convoluted and rhetorical style, the work's best feature is its portrayal of women through two opposing characters: the mature Anna and the impulsive Sophy, although both are women trapped in a world that demands moral perfection while tolerating, and even applauding, male duplicity. In this sense, Wharton anticipates modern feminist criticism, showing how female autonomy is painfully negotiated within the margins of patriarchal expectations.

The best thing about 'The Reef' is the portrait of two opposite characters: the mature Anna and the impulsive Sophy

All this can be corroborated by another new release, Altres temps , five stories by Wharton, edited by Marina Porras, which points out the negative influence that her very strict maternal figure had on her, to the point that “the influence was so strong that Wharton spent her life creating characters who are a revenge against her: insensitive ladies, incapable of understanding the world and stuck in the past.”

Edith Warton The Reef Translated by Ainize Salaberri. Alianza 328 pages 23.95 euros

Other Times Translated by Yannick Garcia. Comanegra 280 pages 19.90 euros

Madame de Treymes. Translated by Carlos Mayor. Ediciones Invisibles . 130 pages. 15 euros.