The Choice E-Book

Edith Wharton

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In "The Choice," Edith Wharton intricately explores the complexities of love, marriage, and personal ambition through the narrative of a young woman confronted with pivotal life decisions. Wharton's literary style is characterized by her keen psychological insight and elegant prose, shedding light on the societal constraints of her time while examining intimate emotions. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century America, the novella encapsulates the tensions between individual desires and societal expectations, revealing the nuanced interplay of choice and consequence in the search for fulfillment. Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, drew from her own experiences as a member of the American upper class, which grants her a unique lens through which to critique the social mores of her time. Her diverse literary career ranges from profound novels such as "The Age of Innocence" to her keenly observed short stories, providing a rich framework for her exploration of the inner lives of her characters. Wharton's focus on the female experience reflects both her personal struggles and her advocacy for women's autonomy in a patriarchal society. Readers captivated by Wharton'Äôs previous works will find "The Choice" a compelling addition to her oeuvre, providing a thought-provoking examination of the dilemmas faced by women in their pursuit of self-determination. This novella is recommended not only for its literary merit but also for its timeless relevance, resonating with contemporary discussions on agency and identity.

Leseprobe

Edith Wharton

The Choice

1916

Published by Good Press, 2019

[email protected]

EAN 4057664640505

Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

Text

I

Table of Contents

Stilling, that night after dinner, had surpassed himself. He always did, Wrayford reflected, when the small fry from Highfield came to dine. He, Cobham Stilling, who had to find his bearings and keep to his level in the big heedless ironic world of New York, dilated and grew vast in the congenial medium of Highfield. The Red House was the biggest house of the Highfield summer colony, and Cobham Stilling was its biggest man. No one else within a radius of a hundred miles (on a conservative estimate) had as many horses, as many greenhouses, as many servants, and assuredly no one else had three motors and a motor-boat for the lake.

The motor-boat was Stilling’s latest hobby, and he rode—or steered—it in and out of the conversation all the evening, to the obvious edification of every one present save his wife and his visitor, Austin Wrayford. The interest of the latter two who, from opposite ends of the drawing-room, exchanged a fleeting glance when Stilling again launched his craft on the thin current of the talk—the interest of Mrs. Stilling and Wrayford had already lost its edge by protracted contact with the subject.

But the dinner-guests—the Rector, Mr. Swordsley, his wife Mrs. Swordsley, Lucy and Agnes Granger, their brother Addison, and young Jack Emmerton from Harvard—were all, for divers reasons, stirred to the proper pitch of feeling. Mr. Swordsley, no doubt, was saying to himself: “If my good parishioner here can afford to buy a motor-boat, in addition to all the other expenditures which an establishment like this must entail, I certainly need not scruple to appeal to him again for a contribution for our Galahad Club.” The Granger girls, meanwhile, were evoking visions of lakeside picnics, not unadorned with the presence of young Mr. Emmerton; while that youth himself speculated as to whether his affable host would let him, when he came back on his next vacation, “learn to run the thing himself”; and Mr. Addison Granger, the elderly bachelor brother of the volatile Lucy and Agnes, mentally formulated the precise phrase in which, in his next letter to his cousin Professor Spildyke of the University of East Latmos, he should allude to “our last delightful trip in my old friend Cobham Stilling’s ten-thousand-dollar motor-launch”—for East Latmos was still in that primitive stage of culture on which five figures impinge.