| November 9, 2008
Yesterday I read The Touchstone (published in 1900) by Edith Wharton. What does touchstone mean? I thought it meant a personal marker, a reminder of who you are. I looked it up and found that it meant "a test or a criterion for determining the quality of a thing" or "a fundamental or quintessential part or feature." So it can be a reminder of who you are: in life you will sometimes face a situation that requires you to act on your own, using your own judgment, and how you behave in that situation, either for good or for bad, reveals the truth of who you are.
In this wonderful early novel, Edith Wharton presents the case of a young man who faces a test of what kind of man he is. The outcome of that test and is exquisitely portrayed in all its nuances, its contradictions of pleasure and pain, and the difficulties and differences between private and public knowledge of the man's character in the face of his situation.
Edith Wharton writes beautifully. She creates each person of her novel with precise prose, illuminating metaphors, and humor; they are elucidated through commonplace situations as well as tragedy, making them very real, alive and breathing and thinking people. The four pivotal players are Glennard, our man whose character is on the line; his wife; his former lover whose letters he possesses and whose posthumous fame have made them quite valuable; and the friend who assists Glennard in his profiting from the letters. All the characters fit together like pieces of a puzzle to give a breathtaking portrait of Glennard's morality and of his painful spiral through recognition that he has failed morally and acceptance that he is not what he thought himself to be.
Edith Wharton is not telling a conventional moral tale. Glennard fails to pass the test of character and yet he flourishes nonetheless, marrying the woman he dreams of marrying and living the life he imagined for himself always in his perfect suburban house (notice the baby who "never cries" -- Wharton is so funny):
"The little house seemed no more than a gay tent pitched against the sunshine. It had the crispness of a freshly starched summer gown and the geraniums on the veranda bloomed as simultaneously as the flowers in a bonnet. The garden was prospering absurdly. Seed they had sown at random - amid laughing counter-charges of incompetence - had shot up in fragrant defiance of their blunders. He smiled to see the clematis unfolding its punctual wings about the porch. The tiny lawn was smooth as a shaven cheek, and a crimson rambles mounted to the nursery window of a baby who never cried. A breeze shook the awning above the tea table, and his wife, as he drew near, could be seen bending above a kettle that was just about to boil. So vividly did the whole scene suggest the painted bliss of a stage setting that it would have been hardly surprising to see her step forward among the flowers and trill out her virtuous happiness from the veranda rail."
Outwardly Glennard has profited but he still he suffers, primarily because he knows he is not the man he thought he was. Through Glennard, Wharton is warning us that although we may not consider ourselves capable of great heroism, we never question that we are incapable of the opposite; we believe we will not stoop to acts of baseness or cowardice or avarice when faced with a tough situation but when the shit hits the fan, we very well might: "It was from the unexpected discovery of his pettiness that he chiefly suffered. Our self-esteem is apt to be based on the hypothetical great act we have never had occasion to perform; and even the most self-scrutinizing modesty credits itself negatively with a high standard of conduct. Glennard had never thought himself a hero; but he had ben certain he was incapable of baseness. We all like our wrong-doings to have a becoming cut, to be made to order, as it were; and Glennard found himself suddenly thrust into a garb of dishonour surely meant for a meaner figure."
Wharton also explores the differences between public and private knowledge: in other words, if I can keep my inadequacies and failures to myself, will I suffer less than if the public knows what I truly am capable (or incapable) of? Wharton suggests that the suffering is different, but not less.
When Glennard laments that he has gained so much from his former lover and yet he never gave her anything, his wife replies that he did give her something, he gave her "the happiness of giving." Irony? No, the truth is that it is easier, morally, to give than to receive. In receiving there is a debt owed, a moral contract of behavior. In giving, there is only the honor of having offered and delivered the gift. But in life we have to do both, give and receive, and in this truly wonderful novel, Wharton asks what are standards, both public and private, that humans should meet in the give and take of life.
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