Discussion Topic
The significance and main theme of Edith Wharton's "The Other Two."
Summary:
The main theme of Edith Wharton's "The Other Two" is the complexity of social relationships and the evolving roles of women in society. The story examines the intricacies of marriage, divorce, and societal expectations through the experiences of its protagonist, Alice, and her relationships with her current and former husbands.
What is the main theme in Edith Wharton's "The Other Two"?
Published in 1904, Edith Wharton's short story "The Other Two" presents a
new social anomaly of the time: it had suddenly become much
easier to obtain a legal divorce. Through her story, Wharton
shows such an anomaly poses problems for society, but since
the anomaly is also a stepping stone towards liberating women, they may be
social problems we simply have to accept. To show the above, Wharton develops
the theme concerning the consequences of easy divorce.
Wharton's theme is portrayed through the fact that Alice uses marriage
and divorce to climb her way up the social ladder. She divorced her first husband, Haskett, because he is not financially well-off. The narrator relays his poverty by describing him as owning a "shabby hat and umbrella" and being a "small effaced-looking man" who "might have been a piano-tuner." Alice says she divorced him because he...
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was a "brute," but he is a very gentle and caring man. Because he had no money or social standing, Alice left him to marry Varick, a man with higher social standing but still no money. In court, she divorced Varick for infidelity, but it was rumored she really divorced him because of his debt. She next marries Waythorn, a man with both social standing and wealth.
Waythorn realizes that, with each of her marriages, Alice changed
herself to fit the image she wanted. As a result, he
married her not really knowing the true her. As their marriage progresses, he
sees her as a compilation of her current and former selves, because with each
marriage, she had left and changed a part of herself:
She was "as easy as an old shoe"—a shoe that too many feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension in too many different directions. Alice Haskett—Alice Varick—Alice Waythorn—she had been each in turn, and had left hanging to each name a little of her privacy, a little of her personality, a little of the inmost self where the unknown god abides.
Waythorn's reflection of his wife as an "old shoe" worn by "too many feet"
shows a social problem created by easy divorce is that women
begin to look like used, cast-off articles of clothing; they also look like
they have mixed, unclear identities because parts of their identities are tied
to their ex-husbands.
By the end of the story, Waythorn comes to accept and be
amused by his wife's complicated nature, showing us the author would rather
promote easy divorce and all its social complications than promote keeping
women imprisoned in unhappy, unfulfilling marriages.
What is the significance of Edith Wharton's "The Other Two"?
"The Other Two" is a comedy of manners about husbands and a wife and adjustments to society. Edith Wharton has explored marital themes in other short stories, but some critics believe this story to be Wharton's most nearly perfect short story in structure and substance. Other critics consider Wharton's stories colorless unengaging imitations of Henry James' stories. In "The Other Two" Wharton explores the contrasting ideas of illusion and belief as well as the related idea of ethics.
In the story, Waythorn is under the illusion that his wife behaves with disinterestedness toward her two ex-husbands, one of whom comes to the Waythorn home to attend to the ill daughter he shares with his ex-wife who is now Waythorn's wife and one of whom the Waythorn's meet in social settings. In this scenario, Mrs. Waythorn creates the illusion, through withholding information, that she is behaving with disinterest toward her ex-husbands, leading Waythorn to the belief that her deportment is above questioning.
Once the illusion is shattered and the belief discarded, the question of ethics remains: What is the ethical thing to do when one has three husbands (two of them ex-husbands) who are thrown together by circumstances? Mrs. Waythorn decides that it is ethical to only speak to them in social gatherings when directly approached by one--and she decides to serve them tea. Supposedly, her current husband agrees with this ethic because he sees the humor of having two of his wife's former husbands in his parlor drinking tea with him.
Thus the significance of "The Other Two" is that it examines the social mores and values of the times by examining an awkward but increasingly common situation in which spouses have multiple spousal connections, thereby exposing the nature of illusion, belief and ethics.