One of our book club members is fond of any books that have won major awards, and so recommended this novel which was the first to win a Pulitzer for a woman in 1920. The edition I read included a long foreword and a very helpful 30 page introduction, but it still seemed foreign to me.
Over the first 150 pages, a form of platonic love triangle slowly develops in the late 1800s aristocratic New York upper crust society that the author belonged to, missing one side until it is suddenly filled in. The sexual dalliances that ostracized individuals are merely hinted at rather than described in any detail, in keeping with Victorian morals, and men are clearly held to a lower standard than women.
The society portrayed is indeed shallow but ruled by rigid protocols, including attendance at balls, and the Opera, travels to London, Paris and Washington, and strict adherence to fashionable expensive clothing and jewelry.
The writing is superb, but I had trouble keeping the characters and relationships straight and this society is just too foreign to me to allow me to appreciate the book.
One cynical quote “… with a shiver of foreboding, he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages around him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other. “
3/5
Thanks, Williams Court Book Club II.
