Inventing the Real: "The Old Maid" and "The Real Thing"

by Edith Wharton, Henry James, Mary Ann Caws (Introduction)

Overview

Ironies upon ironies unfold as two kindred writers (in life as well as art) and masters of the short story dance along the border between reality and appearance. Wharton explores the secret love of a woman for her illegitimate daughter, whom her married sister has adopted in an effort to save the mother’s reputation and to allow her daughter to have a peaceful childhood. James probes a portrait painter’s art as he deals with a couple of threadbare aristocrats, who are seeking employment as his models. They are the “real thing” he is seeking to portray—denizens of drawing room society—but his work is thwarted when he discovers that plucky lower-class models are, in fact, far better able to take on the personae of a rarified class.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558615762
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	07/01/2008
Series:	Two By Two
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born in 1862, American writer Edith Wharton published numerous works including The Age of Innocence, Ethan Fromme, and The House of Mirth. Her writings became widely celebrated, earning her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 and an honorary degree from Yale in 1923. Edith Wharton died of a stroke in 1937 in St.-Brice-sous-Forêt, France.

Born in 1843, Henry James remains a preeminent author and literary critic. Born in the US, he spent most of his working life in England. He is best known for novels such as The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, and The Wings of the Dove. He died in 1916.

Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, Comparative Literature, and Film Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has received Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, Getty, and Rockefeller fellowships. Caws has served on many editorial boards and national committees.

Date of Birth:

January 24, 1862

Date of Death:

August 11, 1937

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

Education:

Educated privately in New York and Europe

Editorial Reviews

"This remarkable volume is a small treasure."
—Brenda Wineapple, author of Hawthorne: A Life

"The inimitable Edith Wharton and her friend, the unerring Henry James—their ironies pristine as ever—produce: brilliant satires pitting convention and patent-leather against the moral complexity of the human heart."
—Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat

"There is something deeply adventurous about these works. . . . Both Wharton and James hold our attention, unceasingly, by opposing forces, male and female, and more subtly, by the counterfoils."
—Mary Ann Caws, from the Introduction



"This remarkable volume is a small treasure."
—Brenda Wineapple, author of Hawthorne: A Life

"The inimitable Edith Wharton and her friend, the unerring Henry James—their ironies pristine as ever—produce: brilliant satires pitting convention and patent-leather against the moral complexity of the human heart."
—Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat

"There is something deeply adventurous about these works. . . . Both Wharton and James hold our attention, unceasingly, by opposing forces, male and female, and more subtly, by the counterfoils."
—Mary Ann Caws, from the Introduction

From the Publisher