Leopold

6 | September 12th

6 | September 12th

"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?" - Edith Wharton

I wanted to love the first female Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. I was infatuated with the idea of her – a rich girl, married to a seemingly perfect match, spilling out her feelings and her secrets into novel after novel. But that was just an idea, rather then a truth. In actuality, I would take The Hungry Caterpillar over The Custom of the Country any day.

“It’s so – so –“ I grasped around for the right word, “ridiculous.”

Waldo tried desperately to fix his tie, pulling it tighter around his neck. “Elaborate.”

“Edith Wharton supposedly wrote some of the best books of her time. Has no one realized, until now, that Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence are essentially the same book?”

Waldo stopped, huffed, and undid his lopsided knot. “I don’t understand.”

“How to tie a tie, or how Edith Wharton wrote the same thing twice?”

“Both.”

I laughed, sidestepping around Waldo’s oversized desk to help him. He had dug out an old mirror from the backroom – he claimed it was a birthday gift – and had propped it up against a bookmark display.

I wrestled with the tie for a few seconds. Once I had safely removed it from his neck, I started my long-awaited rant.

“Ethan and Newland both have these romantic fantasies about a the girl of their wildest dreams. Unlikable wife gets in the way. In the end, he doesn’t get the woman of his sexual fantasies. I might be able to forgive their glaringly similar premises if she wasn’t trying to convey the same message.”

“Innocence is set in upper-class society,” Waldo replied, “Ethan Frome is just about regular people. Us people. People people.”

“Even worse,” I decided. “She’s saying that, no matter your social status, or your position in life, you will always have to choose an unhappy marriage over a happy one. That you have to place everyone else over yourself.”

I finally looped the tie over Waldo’s head, letting it fall flat against his shirt in one fluid motion. I stepped aside so he could examine his reflection.

Waldo turned his head to one side, carefully excavating his collar. I continued, “Yes, matrimony is important. But both Newland and Ethan put the happiness of May, of Zeena, above their own. Do it once, and they’ll it again. They’ll never be happy.”

“Interesting,” Waldo said, nodding slightly. “Very interesting. Fascinating.”

“I’m not saying that happiness equals selfishness. Because it doesn’t. It’s perfectly fine to put your date’s dessert choice above your own. But these two men, these men desperate for someone to love, someone to understand, are destroying –“