The Reef, by Edith Wharton

The Reef, by Edith Wharton

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The Reef, by Edith Wharton

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The Reef By Edith Wharton

The Reef, by Edith Wharton

• Published on: 2015-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .75" w x 5.50" l, .85 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

The Reef, by Edith Wharton

Review A complex, subtle and moving story of the ways in which people torment one another and the awful power of retrospective jealousy PENELOPE LIVELY

From the Inside Flap Edith Wharton was at the height of her enormous literary powers when she published The Reef in 1912, and everything about this novel suggests a mastery so complete that it can achieve nothing higher. The plot, which tells of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal on the lives of four Americans in France, is expertly turned, suspenseful, continually compelling. An assured, unhurried dramatic instinct governs the great moments of confrontation and revelation. The central characters, two of whom are innocents and two of whom are burdened by experience and tinged with desperation, are perfectly delineated: their relationships to one another are constructed with a classical feeling for harmony, proportion, and balance. And the entire novel is imbued with a clear-eyed wisdom about both the possibilities and the limitations of human love. Wharton would go on to write splendid books after completing The Reef, but nowhere does she display a finer command of her art than she does here.

From the Back Cover The plot of this book, which tells of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal on the lives of four Americans in France, is expertly turned, suspenseful, continually compelling. An assured, unhurried dramatic instinct governs the great moments of confrontation and revelation.

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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful. Miss Manners By John Petralia So, this is Edith Wharton! Miss Manners, you say----like watching a bunch of stiff English folks dance the minuet in an over-stuffed drawing room. Well, yeah, but! There's this thing she does with that drill. You, know, it's the way she uses it to penetrate the deepest recesses of her characters'minds, three, in particular. There's Darrow, the handsome man-of-the-world eligible bachelor. Upon first meeting, you'll wonder if there's any there there. Wharton's drill reveals all. There's also, the widow Anna, Darrow's intended. When Anna discovers that Darrow once had a dalliance with Sophy, her daughter's governess, she becomes, as the Italians say, outside of her self. Here, Wharton's drill work is akin to watching a colonoscopy on the brain. While she never really leaves her house, never raises her voice, never moves more than a few muscles of her exquisite face, what we see going on in her brain has more twists, turns, and switchbacks than the car chase scene in the French Connection. Next to Anna and Darrow, Sophy presents with quiet dignity. Yes, she has had this affair with Darrow. Yes, she is of a lower class. But, no, she is not sorry for what she did. And, she is not about to sell her soul for the bourgeoisie existence so valued by Anna and Darrow. She's the most honest of the Wharton characters, and the one most difficult to analyze. One wrong move with the Sophy character, and you could easily get pulp fiction. Instead, Miss Manners drills out a masterpiece.

27 of 35 people found the following review helpful. In shallow waters. By Diane Schirf The Reef by Edith Wharton, with an introduction by Louis Auchincloss. Recommended.In his introduction to The Reef, Louis Auchincloss notes that modern readers may not appreciate a moral climate in which a woman opposes her stepson's engagement to a girl who has had an affair with the man the woman is about to marry. The Reef, however, is as concerned with morality as with class.On his way to France to see his beloved, the widowed Anna Leath, George Darrow receives a telegram telling him not to come "till thirtieth" due to "unexpected obstacle." As time passes and he doesn't receive an explanation for the delay, he experiences growing feelings of disappointment and humiliation. At one point, he imagines the umbrellas and elbows of his fellow travelers saying, "She doesn't want you, doesn't want you, doesn't want you."As he waits undetermined as to whether to go back to London or to press forward, he encounters Sophy Viner, a recently unemployed servant of a woman whose dinners he once attended. She is on her way to Paris to look up old friends and to pursue a theatrical career. Darrow, who feels sorry for himself and the loss he thinks he is about to suffer, finds himself manipulating Sophy into staying with him to attend the theatre and finally into a short liaison. He is unaware that she has fallen in love with him and his kindness in her hour of uncertainty.A year later, Anna Leath eagerly anticipates Darrow's arrival, for they are to be married and begin an overseas stint as part of his diplomatic career. She is also excited because her stepson, Owen Leath, wants to do something that they know will upset his aristocratic, old-fashioned grandmother; he wants to marry Anna's daughter's governess, who is none other than Sophy Viner.Darrow and Sophy's secret is safe with one another, yet Darrow is faced by the uncomfortable fact that the ignorant Anna wants him to support Owen's choice of a woman he knows to be unsuitable but whom he pities. He tries to convince Sophy that Owen is not right for her. "You'd rather I didn't marry any friend of yours," she says "not as a question, but as a mere dispassionate statement of fact." Darrow's lack of feeling and poor conduct make Sophy an undesirable wife for Owen. She is a painful reminder that both of them have broken social conventions.Auchincloss calls Sophy a "fallen woman" in the context of the times, but this is too simplistic. The real issue with Sophy, both before and after Anna finds out about her relationship with Darrow, is her class and lack of social background. After all, in The House of Mirth, extramarital liaisons are commonplace, understood, and accepted if they are discreet and do not upset the social balance. Within the correct parameters, such affairs become a comfortable topic of gossip and speculation.Once Anna has finally divined that there has been something between Darrow and Sophy beyond the casual acquaintance previously admitted, he acknowledges it by saying simply, "She has given me up." This does not refer to Sophy's feelings, but to her expectations. Sophy has learned that, in the world she inhabits, the Darrows seek temporary solace from the Sophys, but permanence and stability from the Annas.The issue that Anna keeps returning to is not that Darrow has deeper feelings for Sophy, but that Sophy has been there before, whether it is to the theatre with Darrow or in Darrow's arms--. True, the liaison happened while he was on his way to Anna and she is bothered by that, but it does not dwell so much in her thoughts as that the kiss he places on her neck has also landed on Sophy's-and that Sophy has been even more intimate with him than she has. Anna asks Darrow, "Do such things happen to men often?" (phrased passively, as though Darrow had been the pursued rather than the pursuer). "I don't know what happens to other men. Such a thing never happened to me . . ." The "thing" here is not the physical aspect of the relationship. Even the "fine" Anna knows that he has indulged because one of his relationships, with a mutual acquaintance named Kitty, drove her away from him in their youth. The fact is that this relationship is outside their social sphere and reflects a lack of discretion that may make him an unsuitable husband and stepparent.Sophy, with her finely tuned perceptions, her delicacy, her generosity, and her genuine feelings (Darrow assures Anna that she is no adventuress, which Anna wants her to be), does not deserve her fate. She goes off to India to return to the service of Mrs. Murrett. In one of the weaknesses of The Reef, Anna's encounter with Sophy's fat, frowsy, common sister and her equally common lover, Jimmy Brance, puts the noble Sophy in her proper place for both Anna and the reader.The Reef is in shallower waters than The House of Mirth or The Age of Innocence, and its structure is weakened by a forced reliance on dialogue. A large part of the final third consists of various characters talking to Anna in her room, coming and going what may as well be a revolving door. Sophy's fate further weakens the drama. Yet, who but Wharton could write, "Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality of hopes and fears"? Such elegant prose and insights alone distinguish The Reef.(As an aside, it would be interesting if, in the same fashion Jean Rhys gave Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre "a life," a writer were to do the same for Sophy, whose viewpoint is never shown.)Diane L. Schirf, 7 July 2003.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful. Flawed Characters= realism; Great Characterization & Setting By A Customer Yes, Wharton was just a tad mean and crude in writing the male counterpart of this book, but that's what makes this book so interesting. These characters had flaws! Actually flaws! I am so sick of reading books with perfect little characters with just one evil villian. This book shows you that no one is perfect, and everyone has a little evil in them.A charming, poetic, lyrical, and beautiful book to read. Wonderful descriptions, vivid images, lovely constructed sentences.The cover of THE REEF is also beautiful. The text and lay out enhances the story, the elegance of the past, the wrong and the right. The cover was also rather of a matte type of thing, not glossy, which reminds the reader of ceramic and the older days when they turn the pages and old the book open. Another lovely read by my favorite female author of the 20th century, Edith Wharton.

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