The Old Maid

So…why keep writing about these vintage things I read and this relatively ancient history, instead of, I don’t know, Rachel (Girl-Stop-Apologizing) Hollis’ latest apology?

Because reading, for example, Edith Wharton helps me see how to write about the present in a way that (I hope) is timeless.

And, through sharing it, I hope to remind you that the past may be a foreign country, but the inhabitants share the same human nature that we have, with the same temptations and desires. Plunging into their world helps me navigate the present. Perhaps it might for some of you too. And perhaps it might inspire some of us to just stop scrolling and tolle lege instead….

Anyway, let’s do another Edith Wharton story. I’ll try to keep it short.

“The Old Maid” is somewhere between a story and a novella. It was adapted into a film starring Bette Davis in 1939, but reading of the differences between story and film and watching the over-the-top trailer make me uninterested in seeing it.

Plot synopsis, and yes there will be spoilers. I’m not going to dance around that with a century old work.

Delia Ralston is married to Jim Ralston, scion of an old New York family, expertly described in the opening to the story. I’ll quote some of it below. Her cousin, Charlotte, is engaged to be married to Jim’s cousin Joe.

Over the past couple of years, Charlotte, after a year in Georgia to cure her of a fever of some sort, returned full of charitable instincts and has been caring for a group of poor children. She comes to Charlotte in crisis. Joe has told her that she must stop caring for these children after their marriage! For if they fell ill, it would impact any future children they might have!

Plot twist!

One of those children, a supposed orphan named Clementine, or Tina is…actually Charlotte’s child!

Her year in Georgia was, of course, actually a pregnancy-related confinement, far away from judging eyes.

Another plot twist!

The father of the child is Clement Spender, the great love of…Delia’s life whom she could not marry because he was a mere artist who refused to give up his art and his wanderings. In his sadness upon returning from Italy, he turned to Charlotte and…well, there you have it.

So, because this Secret Must Be Kept, Charlotte walks away from her engagement, finds a way to bring Tina into her care without revealing anything, and then they both move in with Delia, and over the years, Delia’s husband died, her other children grow to adulthood and move out, and in order to afford Tina greater prospects and to allow her to marry the New York Scion with whom she is now in love, Delia adopts Tina and gives her her name.

And so the last part of the story focuses on the struggle between the two women over who should be considered Tina’s “mother” even though such an understanding is only between the two of them – not even Tina knows. Charlotte is the more distant of the two and really does not have a maternal relationship with Tina, and Delia does. The climax of the story comes on the night before Tina’s wedding night when – and though Wharton is not direct about this, it’s clearly what is at stake – one of the women must go instruct the young woman about the facts of life and her marital duties. Who will it be? Who should it be?

The story is told in the third person, from a combination of omniscient perspective and from Delia’s. We never get inside Charlotte’s head.

And yes, a very different world from ours. Looking at the story from our 21st century perspective, we might focus on the issue of social mores – and how simpler, in a way, life would have been if Delia had only been able to openly acknowledge her pregnancy and maternity, and they’d been able to live their lives, free of judgment. There’s lots to talk about related to social stratification, women’s roles in this society, and what was considered possible and impossible for men and women of various social classes.

That’s one way to look at it.

But just as helpful – from a human perspective – set of questions concerns motivations, hidden and open.

For what is actually fueling the conflict between Charlotte and Delia? It has less to do with Tina and the pull of motherhood than it does with Clement Spencer, of course. He drops out of the story, but he doesn’t really – for his daughter is living with these women, day and night, a symbol of lost love and rivalry. The struggle over Tina – and specifically the struggle over who gets to perform the ritual of initiation into the world of adult woman’s sexuality, is really about both women clinging to that part of them that was once lost, found and lost again.

So, perhaps the story prompts us to examine motives, stated and unstated, and to confront how regrets and resentments impact decisions and might even victimize others, no matter when or where we live, or who we are…

….Instagram influencers and us ordinary folk alike…

The fourth generation of Ralstons had nothing left in the way of convictions save an acute sense of honour in private and business matters; on the life of the community and the state they took their daily views from the newspapers, and the newspapers they already despised. The Ralstons had done little to shape the destiny of their country, except to finance the Cause when it had become safe to do so. They were related to many of the great men who had built the Republic; but no Ralston had so far committed himself as to be great. As old John Frederick said, it was safer to be satisfied with three per cent: they regarded heroism as a form of gambling. Yet by merely being so numerous and so similar they had come to have a weight in the community. People said: “The Ralstons” when they wished to invoke a precedent. This attribution of authority had gradually convinced the third generation of its collective importance, and the fourth, to which Delia Ralston’s husband belonged, had the ease and simplicity of a ruling class.

Within the limits of their universal caution, the Ralstons fulfilled their obligations as rich and respected citizens. They figured on the boards of all the old-established charities, gave handsomely to thriving institutions, had the best cooks in New York, and when they travelled abroad ordered statuary of the American sculptors in Rome whose reputation was already established. The first Ralston who had brought home a statue had been regarded as a wild fellow; but when it became known that the sculptor had executed several orders for the British aristocracy it was felt in the family that this too was a three per cent investment.