The mother had wished to prevent the father,…from ‘so much as looking at the child;’ the father’s plea was that the mother’s lightest touch was ‘simply contamination.’ These were the opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated….Nothing could have been more touching at first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that awaited …
Category: American Literature
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…. If I didn’t feel obligated to read this book for Jazz Age June, I probably would …
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The Glimpses of the Moon, Edith Wharton (1922)
He knew on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how miserable a girl like Susy was the sport of other people’s moods and whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they liked they so often had to do what they disliked. Nick …
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O Pioneers!, Willa Cather (1913)
The land belongs to the future….We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while. O Pioneers! tells the story of the Scandinavian, Bohemian and French immigrants who settled in the Nebraska prairies during the turn of …
Washington Square, Henry James (1880)
Father: The principal thing that we know about this young man—leads us to suppose that, however much he may value your personal merits, he values your money more….If Morris Townsend has spent his own fortune in amusing himself, there is every reason to believe that he would spend yours. Daughter: That is not the principal …
The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton (1913)
Ralph Marvell: You know nothing of this society you’re in; of its antecedents, its rules, its conventions; and it’s my affair to look after you, and warn you when you’re on the wrong track. Undine: I don’t believe an American woman needs to know such a lot about their old rules. They can see I …
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Daisy Miller, Henry James (1878)
“What has she been doing?”“Everything that is not done here. Flirting with any man she could pick up; sitting in corners with mysterious Italians; dancing all the evening with the same partners; receiving visits at eleven o’clock at night.” Published in 1878, Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s early works. It foreshadows his reputation …
Madame de Treymes, Edith Wharton (1907)
And Madame de Treymes has left her husband? Ah, no, poor creature: they don’t leave their husbands—they can’t. Madame de Treymes, published in 1907, is Wharton’s first work after The House of Mirth. As one of the themes in most of her fiction, this novella is very much concerned with the male/female dynamic around marriage. …
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel …
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Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)
It was not the custom in New York drawing rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. Etiquette required that she should wait, immovable as an idol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each other at her side. …
Classic Laurie 