The Catherine Wheel (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jean Stafford
- First Published: 1952
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Love or romance, Betrayal, New England, Revenge
- Locales: Boston, MA
As the epigraph indicates, the title of The Catherine Wheel was taken from a passage in Murder in the Cathedral (1935), a play by T. S. Eliot that compares the things of this world to children's pleasures, as ephemeral as firework displays. In her final novel, Stafford again shows the tragic results that occur when individuals become so intoxicated with their own imagined needs that they are willing to sacrifice other people, as well as their own integrities, in order to fulfill them.
The story is told alternately by two protagonists, Katharine Congreve, a wealthy,...
[The entire page is 661 words long]
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