The little white attic

1/ When Paul, now 9, visits the Moffatts’ new house, there is a very sad passage:  “From these rooms Paul wandered downstairs again. The l...

I finished reading The Custom of the Country a few days ago.  I think the power of The Custom of the Country starts to diminish after Ral...

This is one of those days when I’m asking myself: why do I blog? I’ve had this blog for about 8 years now, and been in the blog world for ov...

1 of my complaints about The Custom of the Country is that Edith Wharton doesn’t specify Undine’s age at the beginning of the story or at d...

So, Edith Wharton’s a book snob.  In her essay “The Vice of Reading”, she makes a distinction between “the mechanical reader” and “the born...

In the blog post about chapter 15 in The Custom of the Country , I already quoted a few poignant passages about Ralph’s illusion. For examp...

Emma Bovary, we all know, is very physical and sensual. Here’s something I notice about the protagonist of The Custom of the Country : she d...

With some novels, such as Anna Karenina , War and Peace , or Lolita , you can tell from the start that you’re reading a masterpiece. Some ot...

The Undine- Ralph Marvell marriage very much reminds me of the Lydgate- Rosamond marriage in Middlemarch . The similarities are probably del...

1 of the 1st things I looked for in The Custom of the Country was light—whether Edith Wharton still made use of light. She does, but because...