Whartons THE OTHER TWO Edith Wharton Critical Essay
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Central to most discussions of Edith Wharton's short story "The Other Two" (1904) is whether or not Wharton concurs with Waythorn when he comes to believe that his wife "was 'as easy as an old shoe'--a shoe that too many feet had worn" (95). Some critics believe that Waythorn's estimate of his wife's shallowness is the essence of Wharton's theme. Others see Waythorn as unreliable, as the target of substantial authorial irony, and consequently believe that Wharton's attitude toward Alice Waythorn is essentially positive. For the most part, all readers focus on the story's marriage plot and on Alice's roles as wife and ex-wife. There is, however, another key to Alice Waythorn's character, one that is largely overlooked. It is the glimpse we get early in the story of Alice's feelings toward her twelve-year-old daughter, typhoid-stricken Lily Haskett. It is in the mother-daughter relationship that Wharton does indeed depict Alice Waythorn as shallow; she is most blamably shallow as a mother, not as a wife or an ex-wife.
We learn early in the story that the Waythorns "had been hastily recalled from their honeymoon" by the illness of Lily (82). When we first see Alice (from Waythorn's perspective), coming downstairs to dinner after kissing Lily goodnight, we are told that she is not wearing her customary smile, and in fact she looks "nearly worried" (84). Waythorn's--and the reader's--first thought is that the absence of a smile has to do with Lily...