Alida Slade
...-of-view. Ms. Wharton makes us feel that Alida is a dominating woman. She always thinks terrible thoughts about her friend Grace. For example she says, “I was wondering how two such exemplary characters as you and Horace had managed to produce anything quite so dynamic”(1192). Alida has been responsible for a misunderstanding of their youth. Alida decides to be a “good friend” and tell Grace that she knows about the time when she went to meet Delphin that night, and it was her fault that Grace got so sick, because she wrote the letter. Alida then feels more power and says, “You tried your best to get him away from me, didn’t you? But you failed; and I kept him”(1195). After Grace admits that she did meet Delphin that night, Alida is overwhelmed and decides that at least she was married to him for twenty-five years. Then Grace tells Alida about her daughter, Barbara, who is also Delphin’s daughter. The reader feels happy for Grace because she took control of the situation and makes Alida seem a lot less powerful. Butenschoen Page 3 The telling of the story “Sucker” from a first person point-of-view makes the reader feel sympathy for Pete since he is the narrator. Pete treats Sucker with little respect at the beginning of the story, pretty much ignoring him. Then Pete gets the woman of his dreams, Maybelle. He is suddenly the happiest sixteen-year-old around and is willing to make Sucker his best friend. Pete says, “I guess you understand people better when you are happy than when something is worrying you”(826). Finally, Maybelle tells Pete that she is sick and tired of his being around and she never cared anything about him. Pete is depressed, as any broken-hearted teenager would be; he takes his anger and depression out on Sucker saying, “Nobody cares anything about you! And just because I felt sorry for you sometimes and tried to act decent don’t think I give a damn about a dumb-bunny like you”(829). Sucker is hurt by this and changes his attitude totally about Pete. He no longer wants anything to do with Pete and does not respect him like before. Pete says, “…sometimes this look in his eyes makes me almost believe that if Sucker could he would kill me”(831). Pete wants things to be like they were before in the friendship, but Sucker has outgrown Pete. Although the fight was Pete’s fault, because the story is told first person from Pete’s view, we feel sorry for him that he cannot have Sucker’s friendship back. It does not matter how close two people are, something can always come between them. Unfortunately, for both Alida Slade and Pete, this wall of separation between them and their close friends was a person of the opposite sex. Edith Wharton and Carson McCullers use different point-of-views to make us feel different emotions toward the two Butenschoen Page 4 characters. Pete and Alida proved that arrogance does not get a person anywhere in life, nor does ruining a good friendship over a man or a woman. Edith Wharton, writer of “Roman Fever” was born in New York in eighteen sixty-two. She had a wealthy family and therefore was privately educated. She had always wanted to be a writer, but her family disapproved. Ms. Wharton was dissatisfied with social life and her marriage. Her fulfillment came from writing. She got a divorce from her husband in nineteen twelve because he was becoming mentally ill. Ms. Wharton then devoted most of her time to writing. She died in nineteen thirty-seven, writing eighty-six stories in total. “Roman Fever” was one of the four stories written within the last year before she died. “The Short Story Criticism” states that Edith Wharton’s fiction exposes cruel excesses of the aristocratic society that reflect concern for status of women as well as the moral decay (411). This statement goes hand in hand with Margaret B. McDowell’s quote: “Wharton’s best work reveals her grasp of social reality, her realization that manners are a key to the outer life of a society and the expression of an inner reality that escapes casual observation, her moral subtlety and incisiveness, and her unwavering insight into human nature” (411). “Roman Fever” is definitely a story of morals between friends. Alida treats Grace with little respect throughout the story, not like close friends should act. Grace admits that she slept with Delphin, who was Alida’s fiancé at the time. Friends should never sleep with other friend’s mates. “Roman Fever definitely portrays the moral decay of society. Butenschoen Page 5 It has been said by the “Critical Survey of Short Fiction” that Edith Wharton denied women the opportunity to develop their full potential and burdened men with disproportionate responsibilities. However, as she matured, her interest in this moved from the external world to the internal world of the individual mind. This adjustment to life sometimes entails a compromise with one’s private self, which constitutes a betrayal (2457). ...