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The Reef

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The Reef by Edith Wharton, with an introduction by Louis Auchincloss. Recommended.

In his introduction to The Reef, Louis Auchincloss notes that modern readers may not appreciate a moral climate in which a woman opposes her stepson's engagement to a girl who has had an affair with the man the woman is about to marry. The Reef, however, is as concerned with morality as with class.

On his way to France to see his beloved, the widowed Anna Leath, George Darrow receives a telegram telling him not to come "till thirtieth" due to "unexpected obstacle." As time passes and he doesn't receive an explanation for the delay, he experiences growing feelings of disappointment and humiliation. At one point, he imagines the umbrellas and elbows of his fellow travelers saying, "She doesn't want you, doesn't want you, doesn't want you."

As he waits undetermined as to whether to go back to London or to press forward, he encounters Sophy Viner, a recently unemployed servant of a woman whose dinners he once attended. She is on her way to Paris to look up old friends and to pursue a theatrical career. Darrow, who feels sorry for himself and the loss he thinks he is about to suffer, finds himself manipulating Sophy into staying with him to attend the theatre and finally into a short liaison. He is unaware that she has fallen in love with him and his kindness in her hour of uncertainty.

A year later, Anna Leath eagerly anticipates Darrow's arrival, for they are to be married and begin an overseas stint as part of his diplomatic career. She is also excited because her stepson, Owen Leath, wants to do something that they know will upset his aristocratic, old-fashioned grandmother; he wants to marry Anna's daughter's governess, who is none other than Sophy Viner.

Darrow and Sophy's secret is safe with one another, yet Darrow is faced by the uncomfortable fact that the ignorant Anna wants him to support Owen's choice of a woman he knows to be unsuitable but whom he pities. He tries to convince Sophy that Owen is not right for her. "You'd rather I didn't marry any friend of yours," she says "not as a question, but as a mere dispassionate statement of fact." Darrow's lack of feeling and poor conduct make Sophy an undesirable wife for Owen. She is a painful reminder that both of them have broken social conventions.

Auchincloss calls Sophy a "fallen woman" in the context of the times, but this is too simplistic. The real issue with Sophy, both before and after Anna finds out about her relationship with Darrow, is her class and lack of social background. After all, in The House of Mirth, extramarital liaisons are commonplace, understood, and accepted if they are discreet and do not upset the social balance. Within the correct parameters, such affairs become a comfortable topic of gossip and speculation.

Once Anna has finally divined that there has been something between Darrow and Sophy beyond the casual acquaintance previously admitted, he acknowledges it by saying simply, "She has given me up." This does not refer to Sophy's feelings, but to her expectations. Sophy has learned that, in the world she inhabits, the Darrows seek temporary solace from the Sophys, but permanence and stability from the Annas.

The issue that Anna keeps returning to is not that Darrow has deeper feelings for Sophy, but that Sophy has been there before, whether it is to the theatre with Darrow or in Darrow's arms--. True, the liaison happened while he was on his way to Anna and she is bothered by that, but it does not dwell so much in her thoughts as that the kiss he places on her neck has also landed on Sophy's-and that Sophy has been even more intimate with him than she has. Anna asks Darrow, "Do such things happen to men often?" (phrased passively, as though Darrow had been the pursued rather than the pursuer). "I don't know what happens to other men. Such a thing never happened to me . . ." The "thing" here is not the physical aspect of the relationship. Even the "fine" Anna knows that he has indulged because one of his relationships, with a mutual acquaintance named Kitty, drove her away from him in their youth. The fact is that this relationship is outside their social sphere and reflects a lack of discretion that may make him an unsuitable husband and stepparent.

Sophy, with her finely tuned perceptions, her delicacy, her generosity, and her genuine feelings (Darrow assures Anna that she is no adventuress, which Anna wants her to be), does not deserve her fate. She goes off to India to return to the service of Mrs. Murrett. In one of the weaknesses of The Reef, Anna's encounter with Sophy's fat, frowsy, common sister and her equally common lover, Jimmy Brance, puts the noble Sophy in her proper place for both Anna and the reader.

The Reef is in shallower waters than The House of Mirth or The Age of Innocence, and its structure is weakened by a forced reliance on dialogue. A large part of the final third consists of various characters talking to Anna in her room, coming and going what may as well be a revolving door. Sophy's fate further weakens the drama. Yet, who but Wharton could write, "Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality of hopes and fears"? Such elegant prose and insights alone distinguish The Reef.

(As an aside, it would be interesting if, in the same fashion Jean Rhys gave Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre "a life," a writer were to do the same for Sophy, whose viewpoint is never shown.)

Diane L. Schirf, 7 July 2003.

Yes, Wharton was just a tad mean and crude in writing the male counterpart of this book, but that's what makes this book so interesting. These characters had flaws! Actually flaws! I am so sick of reading books with perfect little characters with just one evil villian. This book shows you that no one is perfect, and everyone has a little evil in them.

A charming, poetic, lyrical, and beautiful book to read. Wonderful descriptions, vivid images, lovely constructed sentences.

The cover of THE REEF is also beautiful. The text and lay out enhances the story, the elegance of the past, the wrong and the right. The cover was also rather of a matte type of thing, not glossy, which reminds the reader of ceramic and the older days when they turn the pages and old the book open.

Another lovely read by my favorite female author of the 20th century, Edith Wharton.

So, this is Edith Wharton! Miss Manners, you say----like watching a bunch of stiff English folks dance the minuet in an over-stuffed drawing room. Well, yeah, but! There's this thing she does with that drill. You, know, it's the way she uses it to penetrate the deepest recesses of her characters'minds, three, in particular. There's Darrow, the handsome man-of-the-world eligible bachelor. Upon first meeting, you'll wonder if there's any there there. Wharton's drill reveals all. There's also, the widow Anna, Darrow's intended. When Anna discovers that Darrow once had a dalliance with Sophy, her daughter's governess, she becomes, as the Italians say, outside of her self. Here, Wharton's drill work is akin to watching a colonoscopy on the brain. While she never really leaves her house, never raises her voice, never moves more than a few muscles of her exquisite face, what we see going on in her brain has more twists, turns, and switchbacks than the car chase scene in the French Connection. Next to Anna and Darrow, Sophy presents with quiet dignity. Yes, she has had this affair with Darrow. Yes, she is of a lower class. But, no, she is not sorry for what she did. And, she is not about to sell her soul for the bourgeoisie existence so valued by Anna and Darrow. She's the most honest of the Wharton characters, and the one most difficult to analyze. One wrong move with the Sophy character, and you could easily get pulp fiction. Instead, Miss Manners drills out a masterpiece.

You could say that "The Reef" has two themes -- that you have to risk great pain to experience great passion, and the questions of infidelity, love and class and how they clash.

It also happens to be the brilliant Edith Wharton at her most contemplative, since the entire dramatic storyline takes place in a love square at a rural French chateau. While "The Reef" is a slow-moving affair, the hauntingly poetic prose that Wharton employs -- and the painful questions it raises -- are worth immersing your brain into.

Charles Darrow has been reunited with his first love Anna, now a widow living in France. He plans to propose to her, but on the train receives a telegram telling him not to come until the thirtieth of the month. Angry and hurt (he's kind of a playboy brat), he salves his hurt feelings by escorting pretty Sophy Viner (Alicia Witt), a feisty young girl hoping to get a job on the stage, around Paris for awhile. Unsurprisingly, Sophy's vibrant personality leads to a brief affair.

A few months later, Charles and Anna have made up their differences, and their romance is back on track. But when Charles arrives at Anna's mother-in-law's chateau, he learns that her daughter's new governess is none other than Sophy. To make this whole scenario even more surreal, Charles' ex-lover is now engaged to Anna's stepson -- and both Anna and the stepson are unaware of what happened. But though Sophy and Charles try to keep their shared past a secret, the truth threatens to ruin all four of them.

Yeah, it sounds a bit like a soap opera in period dress. It's only because of Wharton's skill that, instead of a cheap tawdry story, "The Reef" becomes a languid, sun-washed study of sexual double-standards, class, and repressed emotion. The entire novel is awash in a seemingly endless sea of contemplations -- many of the characters linger for pages over their pasts, their conflicted feelings, and the secrets they hide from one another.

But it's also a study of tough relationship questions -- should infidelity be forgiven, and at what stage of a possible relationship does it become infidelity? And if someone wrongs you, can you trust them again?

It's also beautifully written -- Wharton's slow, stately prose is filled with exquisite turns of phrase and beautifully evocative images. Even the most mundane places painted with words as if on a canvas ("The sun lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered books and flowers in old porcelain vases"). Much of the narrative is wrapped up in the slowly shifting inner feelings, tiny gestures and veiled comments of the characters, so that half of the most important confrontations seem to happen in a sort of code.

Charles is a rather flawed male lead -- he's weak, flirtatious and easily upset, and seems to regard Anna postponing their meeting as being more inconsiderate than his affair with someone else. The women's roles are far more compelling, though. Anna is a strong, wealthy woman who is trying to uncork her own intense feelings so she can fully appreciate life, and Sophy is her polar opposite -- a vibrant, joyous young girl who lacks the resources to enjoy life as she wishes.

A lesser author would have crashed on "The Reef," but in Edith Wharton's hands it becomes a powerful, vaguely tragic love quadrangle. Definitely worth reading, though it slows to a crawl at times.

A beautifully written story in which the two central female characters (Anna Leath and Sophy Viner) are alternate personas who struggle and are confined by the social order of the day. The genteel, older Anna -- whose rich interior life and deep introspection separated her -- as a young girl -- from other young women of her time who understood how to connect, particularly to potential husbands. And yet, Anna's early inability to form meaningful relationships cause other mothers of her circle to consider Anna the model of all ladylike virtues. Anna believes marriage will free her, yet it confines her. As a widow, she reaches back to the unrealized love of her early life and seeks to overcome the inhibitions of her past. Contrast that to Sophy Viner, young, vibrant and utterly naive, without the protection of family or fortune. The happiest time of her life is a brief, unwitting affair with the gentleman who was Anna's early love and who is about to return to Anna. How these three characters' lives intersect, and how they each struggle with conscience, character and social entitlement (or lack thereof) results in a thoughtful commentary on men, women and society. Wharton's beautiful prose and vivid scenes of both domestic life and nature add to the reader's experience.

Whatever you think of "The Reef," it contains one of Edith Wharton's most wonderful scenes. Our "hero" has been dallying for a while in a hotel with the young girl he picked up on the boat dock, and he's wearying of her. We see his boredom and disillusionment through his reactions to the mere sounds she is making in the next room. He is so familiar by now with her habits and movements that he knows what she's doing without actually seeing her. A gem of a scene, in a strange jewel of a book.

I must admit, despite being a HUGE Edith Wharton fan, this novel was, in the beginning, hard to delve into. But once the affair of Darrow and Sophie Viner is past, the novel beings to take on shape and the conflicts between Viner, Darrow, Anna Leath and her stepson Owen continue with the inexorability of a dance of changing partners but the same inexorable tune. Only with the final, subtly nasty last scene do we get a sense of where all the characters will end up.

The novel centers around George Darrow, appropriately a diplomat. His ability to lie is second-nature--the first instinct of his seems to be to frame any uncomfortable situation in a fiction to suit his own purposes. His off-and-on again love is Anna Leath, who never seems to be able to make up her mind about him. She clearly loves him, yet puts him off again and again, first through a disastrous marriage and then later in the novel in a desultory engagement. Her desire to "know everything" is a shield for her indecision; her analytical and curious bent is a disguise for her indecision, and ultimately her undoing.

Her stepson, the impetuous Owen is not drawn so finely--but he is essentially an unformed youth. And Sophie; an ingenue but..with the propensity to either be great or horrible. The last scene with her caricature of an older sister is a hint of how her own youthful personality may harden.

There is a great deal of the use of rain as a symbol in this novel; it seems to drench and dampen the French landscape not with refreshing moisture, but a dreary, inexorable and uncomfortable wetness, trapping the characters in a submarine world of misty and indistinct motivations.

The subtle storytelling--we read the shock of events in small gestures, is a delicacy we have grown away from, but it is stunning and skillful. And yet, in our open age of permissiveness, it is almost incomprehensible that a single, casual sexual liaison could have such a devastation on four lives. Yet..it does and this is the core of the novel. The four characters founder on a reef of fossilized society norms, and their own characters die as the coral do and form the skeleton of personality.

While it is a bit slow to start and nowhere near as good as House of Mirth, The Age of Innocents or Custom of the Country, it is worth reading if you enjoy Edith Wharton.

You could say that "The Reef" has two themes -- that you have to risk great pain to experience great passion, and the questions of infidelity, love and class and how they clash.

It also happens to be the brilliant Edith Wharton at her most contemplative, since the entire dramatic storyline takes place in a love square at a rural French chateau. While "The Reef" is a slow-moving affair, the hauntingly poetic prose that Wharton employs -- and the painful questions it raises -- are worth immersing your brain into.

Charles Darrow has been reunited with his first love Anna, now a widow living in France. He plans to propose to her, but on the train receives a telegram telling him not to come until the thirtieth of the month. Angry and hurt (he's kind of a playboy brat), he salves his hurt feelings by escorting pretty Sophy Viner (Alicia Witt), a feisty young girl hoping to get a job on the stage, around Paris for awhile. Unsurprisingly, Sophy's vibrant personality leads to a brief affair.

A few months later, Charles and Anna have made up their differences, and their romance is back on track. But when Charles arrives at Anna's mother-in-law's chateau, he learns that her daughter's new governess is none other than Sophy. To make this whole scenario even more surreal, Charles' ex-lover is now engaged to Anna's stepson -- and both Anna and the stepson are unaware of what happened. But though Sophy and Charles try to keep their shared past a secret, the truth threatens to ruin all four of them.

Yeah, it sounds a bit like a soap opera in period dress. It's only because of Wharton's skill that, instead of a cheap tawdry story, "The Reef" becomes a languid, sun-washed study of sexual double-standards, class, and repressed emotion. The entire novel is awash in a seemingly endless sea of contemplations -- many of the characters linger for pages over their pasts, their conflicted feelings, and the secrets they hide from one another.

But it's also a study of tough relationship questions -- should infidelity be forgiven, and at what stage of a possible relationship does it become infidelity? And if someone wrongs you, can you trust them again?

It's also beautifully written -- Wharton's slow, stately prose is filled with exquisite turns of phrase and beautifully evocative images. Even the most mundane places painted with words as if on a canvas ("The sun lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered books and flowers in old porcelain vases"). Much of the narrative is wrapped up in the slowly shifting inner feelings, tiny gestures and veiled comments of the characters, so that half of the most important confrontations seem to happen in a sort of code.

Charles is a rather flawed male lead -- he's weak, flirtatious and easily upset, and seems to regard Anna postponing their meeting as being more inconsiderate than his affair with someone else. The women's roles are far more compelling, though. Anna is a strong, wealthy woman who is trying to uncork her own intense feelings so she can fully appreciate life, and Sophy is her polar opposite -- a vibrant, joyous young girl who lacks the resources to enjoy life as she wishes.

A lesser author would have crashed on "The Reef," but in Edith Wharton's hands it becomes a powerful, vaguely tragic love quadrangle. Definitely worth reading, though it slows to a crawl at times.

This is an exquisitely written and fascinating novel, a real bridge from the Victorian style, structure, and values, to a more modern sensibility. And the Everyman's hardcover edition is beautifully designed, just the right size, even comes with a bookmark ribbon, and is priced comfortably, especially with amazon's discount. My book club chose THE REEF for this month, and I'm so glad -- had always meant to read Edith Wharton and now want to read much more of her.

While "The Reef" is to my mind not on par with her other great works, it is nonetheless an entirely worthwhile read. The emotional drama is compelling, palpable, devastating. Altogether engrossing. The descriptive scenes are for the most part not as sharp as they might be, but the power of the novel lies in its dialogue-- in what is said, but more often what is not said. It concerns the inability to express in any meaningful fashion those things that most matter, the agony of non-expression as much as the agony of the primary feelings themselves. I enter, perhaps, too easily into the emotions of what are, after all, only fictional characters, but I was moved to tears by certain passages, on account of the emotional rawness that underlies the attempts to preserve decorum. A good novel, and thoroughly enjoyable.