TWILIGHT SLEEP (eBook)

Edith Wharton (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Musaicum Books (Verlag)
978-80-272-3620-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Edith Wharton's novel, 'Twilight Sleep', is a captivating exploration of the tumultuous lives of the New York elite during the early 20th century. With her characteristic wit and keen observation of societal norms, Wharton delves into the complexities of marriage, family, and social status. The novel is written in a crisp and elegant prose that perfectly captures the privileged yet stifling world of the upper class. Wharton's sharp dialogue and astute characterizations bring the vibrant society of the era to life, making 'Twilight Sleep' a compelling and insightful read within the context of American literary realism. The book's examination of the façade of perfection maintained by the wealthy and the consequences of societal pressures is as relevant today as it was during Wharton's time.

Textauszug

II

Table of Contents

The Marchesa was something which happened at irregular but inevitable moments in Mrs. Manford’s life.

Most people would have regarded the Marchesa as a disturbance; some as a distinct inconvenience; the pessimistic as a misfortune. It was a matter of conscious pride to Mrs. Manford that, while recognizing these elements in the case, she had always contrived to make out of it something not only showy but even enviable.

For, after all, if your husband (even an ex-husband) has a first cousin called Amalasuntha degli Duchi di Lucera, who has married the Marchese Venturino di San Fedele, of one of the great Neapolitan families, it seems stupid and wasteful not to make some use of such a conjunction of names and situations, and to remember only (as the Wyants did) that when Amalasuntha came to New York it was always to get money, or to get her dreadful son out of a new scrape, or to consult the family lawyers as to some new way of guarding the remains of her fortune against Venturino’s systematic depredations.

Mrs. Manford knew in advance the hopelessness of these quests — all of them, that is, except that which consisted in borrowing money from herself. She always lent Amalasuntha two or three thousand dollars (and put it down to the profit-and-loss column of her carefully-kept private accounts); she even gave the Marchesa her own last year’s clothes, cleverly retouched; and in return she expected Amalasuntha to shed on the Manford entertainments that exotic lustre which the near relative of a Duke who is also a grandee of Spain and a great dignitary of the Papal Court trails with her through the dustiest by-ways, even if her mother has been a mere Mary Wyant of Albany.

Mrs. Manford had been successful. The Marchesa, without taking thought, fell naturally into the part assigned to her. In her stormy and uncertain life, New York, where her rich relations lived, and from which she always came back with a few thousand dollars, and clothes that could be made to last a year, and good advice about putting the screws on Venturino, was like a foretaste of heaven. “Live there? Carina, NO! It is too — too uneventful. As heaven must be. But everybody is celestially kind . . . and Venturino has learnt that there are certain things my American relations will not tolerate. . .” Such was Amalasuntha’s version of her visits to New York, when she recounted them in the drawing~rooms of Rome, Naples or St. Moritz; whereas in New York, quite carelessly and unthinkingly — for no one was simpler at heart than Amalasuntha — she pronounced names, and raised suggestions, which cast a romantic glow of unreality over a world bounded by Wall Street on the south and Long Island in most other directions; and in this glow Pauline Manford was always eager to sun her other guests.

“My husband’s cousin” (become, since the divorce from Wyant “my son’s cousin”) was still, after twenty-seven years, a useful social card. The Marchesa di San Fedele, now a woman of fifty, was still, in Pauline’s set, a pretext for dinners, a means of paying off social scores, a small but steady luminary in the uncertain New York heavens. Pauline could never see her rather forlorn wisp of a figure, always clothed in careless unnoticeable black (even when she wore Mrs. Manford’s old dresses), without a vision of echoing Roman staircases, of the torchlit arrival of Cardinals at the Lucera receptions, of a great fresco-like background of Popes, princes, dilapidated palaces, cypress-guarded villas, scandals, tragedies, and interminable feuds about inheritances.

“It’s all so dreadful — the wicked lives those great Roman families lead. After all, poor Amalasuntha has good American blood in her — her mother was a Wyant; yes — Mary Wyant married Prince Ottaviano di Lago Negro, the Duke of Lucera’s son, who used to be at the Italian Legation in Washington; but what is Amalasuntha to do, in a country where there’s no divorce, and a woman just has to put up with EVERYTHING? The Pope has been most kind; he sides entirely with Amalasuntha. But Venturino’s people are very powerful too — a great Neapolitan family — yes, Cardinal Ravello is Venturino’s uncle . . . so that altogether it’s been dreadful for Amalasuntha . . . and such an oasis to her, coming back to her own people. . .”

Pauline Manford was quite sincere in believing that it was dreadful for Amalasuntha. Pauline herself could conceive of nothing more shocking than a social organization which did not recognize divorce, and let all kinds of domestic evils fester undisturbed, instead of having people’s lives disinfected and whitewashed at regular intervals, like the cellar. But while Mrs. Manford thought all this — in fact, in the very act of thinking it — she remembered that Cardinal Ravello, Venturino’s uncle, had been mentioned as one of the probable delegates to the Roman Catholic Congress which was to meet at Baltimore that winter, and wondered whether an evening party for his Eminence could not be organized with Amalasuntha’s help; even got as far as considering the effect of torch-bearing footmen (in silk stockings) lining the Manford staircase — which was of marble, thank goodness! — and of Dexter Manford and Jim receiving the Prince of the Church on the doorstep, and walking upstairs backward carrying silver candelabra; though Pauline wasn’t sure she could persuade them to go as far as that.

Pauline felt no more inconsistency in this double train of thought than she did in shuddering at the crimes of the Roman Church and longing to receive one of its dignitaries with all the proper ceremonial. She was used to such rapid adjustments, and proud of the fact that whole categories of contradictory opinions lay down together in her mind as peacefully as the Happy Families exhibited by strolling circuses. And of course, if the Cardinal DID come to her house, she would show her American independence by inviting also the Bishop of New York — her own Episcopal Bishop — and possibly the Chief Rabbi (also a friend of hers), and certainly that wonderful much-slandered “Mahatma” in whom she still so thoroughly believed. . .

But the word pulled her up short. Yes; certainly she believed in the “Mahatma.” She had every reason to. Standing before the tall threefold mirror in her dressing-room, she glanced into the huge bathroom beyond — which looked like a biological laboratory, with its white tiles, polished pipes, weighing machines, mysterious appliances for douches, gymnastics and “physical culture” — and recalled with gratitude that it was certainly those eurythmic exercises of the Mahatma’s (“holy ecstasy,” he called them) which had reduced her hips after everything else had failed. And this gratitude for the reduction of her hips was exactly on the same plane, in her neat card-catalogued mind, with her enthusiastic faith in his wonderful mystical teachings about Self–Annihilation, Anterior Existence and Astral Affinities . . . all so incomprehensible and so pure . . . Yes; she would certainly ask the Mahatma. It would do the Cardinal good to have a talk with him. She could almost hear his Eminence saying, in a voice shaken by emotion: “Mrs. Manford, I want to thank you for making me know that Wonderful Man. If it hadn’t been for you — ”

Ah, she did like people who said to her: “If it hadn’t been for you —!”

The telephone on her dressing-table rang. Miss Bruss had switched on from the boudoir. Mrs. Manford, as she unhooked the receiver, cast a nervous glance at the clock. She was already seven minutes late for her Marcel-waving, and —

Ah: it was Dexter’s voice! Automatically she composed her face to a wifely smile, and her voice to a corresponding intonation. “Yes? Pauline, dear. Oh — about dinner tonight? Why, you know, Amalasuntha . . . You say you’re going to the theatre with Jim and Lita? But, Dexter, you can’t! They’re dining here — Jim and Lita are. But OF COURSE . . . Yes, it must have been a mistake; Lita’s so flighty . . . I know. . .” (The smile grew a little pinched; the voice echoed it. Then, patiently): “Yes; what else? . . . OH . . . oh, Dexter . . . what do you mean? . . . The Mahatma? WHAT? I don’t understand!”

But she did. She was conscious of turning white under her discreet cosmetics. Somewhere in the depths of her there had lurked for the last weeks an unexpressed fear of this very thing: a fear that the people who were opposed to the teaching of the Hindu sage — New York’s great “spiritual uplift” of the last two years — were gaining power and beginning to be a menace. And here was Dexter Manford actually saying something about having been asked to conduct an investigation into the state of things at the Mahatma’s “School of Oriental Thought,” in which all sorts of unpleasantness might be involved. Of course Dexter never said much about professional matters on the telephone; he did not, to his wife’s thinking, say enough about them when he got home. But what little she now gathered made her feel positively ill.

“Oh, Dexter, but I must see you about this! At once! You couldn’t come back to lunch, I suppose? Not possibly? No — this evening there’ll be no chance. Why, the dinner for Amalasuntha — oh, please don’t forget it AGAIN!”

With one hand on the receiver, she reached with the other for her engagement-list (the duplicate of Miss Bruss’s), and ran a nervous unseeing eye over it. A...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.12.2017
• Verlagsort: Prague
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: 1920s satire • american novelist • Bronte • Dickens • Downton Abbey • Fitzgerald • Gabriel García Márquez • Hemingway • Jane Austen • Jazz Age • John Steinbeck • Little Women • modern themes • Psychological examination • Pulitzer prize-winning • Sexuality drugs • Social Values • spiritual Healing • The Forsyte Saga • upper-class society
• ISBN-10: 80-272-3620-7 / 8027236207
• ISBN-13: 978-80-272-3620-6 / 9788027236206