Feminism in "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton

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rachel bowlby “I Had Barbara”: Women’s Ties and Wharton’s “Roman Fever” T he setting of Edith Wharton’s short story “Roman Fever” (1934) is consciously casual. Two wealthy American widows with “time to k ill” (10) sit chatting through the afternoon, on the terrace of a restaurant i n Rome, overlooking the ruins of the ancient city. They have known each other off and on all their lives. Both have daughters who are presently out together with two eligible young Italian men, and the women recall t heir own courting days, also together, also in Rome. There is a risky edge to this talk because they had both been in love with the same man and k new it at the time. One of the women had been engaged to him, and duly married him, yet it is she, Mrs. Slade, who now asks herself, in relation to t he other, “Would she never cure herself of envying her?” (17)—and who pushes the conversation forward with further questions. In its final pages, the story moves into high gear with the dis closure, one after another, of three interlocking secrets from that time. M rs. Ansley had received a letter from Delphin Slade inviting her to meet h im one night at the Colosseum. The first thrust comes from Mrs. Slade, Volume 17, Number 3 doi 10.1215/10407391-2006-010 © 2006 by Brown University and d i f f e r e n c e s : A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 38 Women’s Ties and Wharton’s “Roman Fever” who declares that it was she, out of jealousy, who wrote that letter, in an attempt to trick her rival into a dangerous adventure. (Behind the stratagem lay the story of a great-aunt who, by sending her sister out one cold n ight to the Forum “because they were in love with the same man” [18] had caused her death.) For Grace Ansley, this ruins the memory of “the only letter I ever had from him” (21), and Mrs. Slade’s triumph seems to be confirmed.
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