Madame de Treymes

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 109K words
Chapters: 11

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Madame de Treymes by Edith WhartonAuthor: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 1, 2003

Editor's review

Madame de Treymes is a short novella by Edith Wharton that, despite its brevity, showcases her signature themes: the clash between the Old World and the New, the calculation of interests in marriage, and the pressure social convention exerts on personal choice. The story revolves around a transnational marriage and a family secret; the narration is restrained, the dialogue edged with innuendo, and the plot advances through asymmetries of information and psychological maneuvering. As a public-domain ebook, it is well suited both to discovering Wharton's economical craft beyond her full-length novels and to serving as a text for discussing marital ethics and social class. Readers should note the narrator's subtle shifts in attitude toward the characters to appreciate a method that passes no explicit judgment yet leaves traces of judgment everywhere.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who admire Wharton and Euro-American realist fiction
Literary readers interested in marriage, family, and class
Students who need a short English original as course material
Readers who want psychological narrative within a limited span

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting intense action or suspenseful twists
Readers impatient with slow psychological development
Readers seeking a full-length family saga

Reading tips

First sort out the kinship and marriage ties among the characters, then read the dialogue; the subtext becomes easier to catch.
After finishing, revisit key scenes and note how the narrator hints at stance through detail.
Read alongside other Wharton works to observe how her marriage theme continues.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this novel long? How long does it take to finish?

It is a novella, not long. Readers with some English reading habit can usually finish it in a few hours, suitable for a weekend or a short commute.

Can I understand it without having read other Wharton works?

Yes. The story stands fairly independently, and the relationships are introduced gradually. A basic familiarity with late-nineteenth-century Euro-American upper-class views on marriage and property will make it smoother.

Is the character in the title the protagonist?

Madame de Treymes is a key figure who drives the plot, but the narrative perspective does not center entirely on her. Her identity and family ties form the story's core conflict, and readers must piece her image together through others' observations.

Comments

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About the author

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 Author

Edith Wharton (Wharton, Edith, 1862–1937) was an American novelist, with 44 works held in this collection. She depicts with fine brushwork the manners and moral dilemmas of New York high society from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Her representative novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth both focus on women's struggles among marriage, class, and selfhood; Ethan Frome, set in rural New England, presents tragic fates in a repressive environment. Her style is calm and restrained, revealing through everyday details the conflict between individual psychology and social convention, and her works combine irony with sympathy. Beyond novels, she also wrote nonfiction such as The Decoration of Houses and ghost-story collections such as Tales of Men and Ghosts, showing diverse subjects. Public information is limited, and biographical details fall outside this introduction; yet judging from the works held here alone, her sustained attention to social class and gender roles makes her a voice not to be overlooked in American literature.